- Credibility:
ALBANY PARK — A popular Northwest Side elotero is thanking supporters who donated more than $15,00 and counting to help him after his food cart was stolen last month.
Joaquín García Jimenez has sold snacks around the Albany Park and North Park neighborhoods for more than 20 years. He’s a fixture around Volta Elementary, 4950 N. Avers Ave., where neighbors say kids wait by his cart until their parents pick them up.
Last month, someone stole his food cart from where he stored it near his home. Neighbors helped García Jimenez set up a GoFundMe campaign with a goal of $8,000 to cover the cost of a new cart before the start of the school year.
As of Wednesday, the GoFundMe had raised $264. But by Friday morning — the day after Block Club published a story about García Jimenez’s plight and the fundraiser to help him — the campaign had blown past its goal, with fans donating $9,050.
Three hours later, the total had reached $9,595.
By Monday morning, it soared to nearly $16,000.
“The day my story was published on your Block Club Chicago, I had so many donations come in and other newsrooms, like Telemundo and ABC7, reached out trying to get a hold of me about this,” García Jimenez said in Spanish. “Thanks to God, everything has worked out so nicely and I’m happy. It’s beautiful and I’m so thankful to everyone who donated.”
Now that he’s surpassed his fundraising goal, García Jimenez said he is looking to buy a used mail truck that he could convert into a beefed-up version of his food cart, he said.
“I’m getting too old to be walking around, pushing a cart in the cold during the winter or when it’s raining hard. Thanks to people’s generosity, my community helping, I want to buy a small little mail truck where I can be inside and still selling my elotes and other food in bad weather,” García Jimenez said.
“That’s my idea that I’m talking through with the people who helped me set up the GoFundMe. Nothing big or new or anything, just something for me to sell elotes from.”
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