This is part of a series that highlights the work of those who stepped up to help others during the difficult days of 2020.

Ruben Johnson-Santiago knows what living in poverty feels like.

It’s the reason he can empathize with the hundreds of people he sees monthly, families struggling through the pandemic because of lost jobs and dealing with shrinking resources.

He’s become a fixture in the New London area over the past several months, organizing food distribution events, backpack and school supply giveaways, winter coat collections, a barbeque, toy drive and just about anything else he thinks can make a difference.

He said he was recently laid off because of the pandemic and the outreach initiatives have become his full-time vocation.

Perhaps the most visible demonstration of Johnson-Santiago’s work is the food distribution events, where boxes containing about 30 pounds of meat, dairy, produce and milk are handed out to families in need.

The program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farmers to Families Food Box Program. Johnson-Santiago said he started inquiring about the program when he saw a friend helping to organize a similar distribution event in Bridgeport. He partnered locally with organizations like Gemma E. Moran United Way/Labor Food Center and Opportunities Industrialization Center of New London County, known as the New London OIC, to make it happen.

Over the past few weeks, Johnson-Santiago could be found in New London, Groton and Montville, getting the word out, helping unload tractor-trailer loads of food and finding an alarming number of people are living on the edge. In New London, Johnson-Santiago's own group, Keeping Kids Out of Prison, or K.O.P., connected with nonprofits Hearing Youth Voices, New London OIC and Formerly Inc. to set up the NL Feed the Fam 4Free Project.

“I’m just so blessed to be able to do this for my community,” Johnson-Santiago said. “I just feel that now during the pandemic is a perfect time to give back.”

He also has other initiatives and motivations.

Striving to be a role model

Johnson-Santiago is a peer mentor and a member of Connecticut Bail Fund, an advocacy group whose mission is “to reduce the direct harms caused by criminalization, incarceration, and deportation” and pay bail for people incarcerated simply because they are poor.

Now 43, he grew up in New London. His parents were drug addicts and he was shuffled between more than a dozen different foster homes. He dabbled in drug dealing and “never had role models to tell me what I was doing was wrong.” It led to crime, arrests and several stints in prison.

Looking back, Johnson-Santiago said he knows now that as a young Black man, he was mistreated by the court system and accepted plea agreements with accompanying prison time that should have never happened.

It’s one of the reasons he’s committed to working with Connecticut Bail Fund and speaking with inmates and people recently released from prison to help find ways to keep them out of prison and get them into programs or find homes.

He also had a strong personal motivation for turning his own life around. Tragedy struck in 2011. His son, Ruben Elijah Santiago, died of a brain cancer tumor at the age of 16.

Johnson-Santiago had been visiting his son regularly but was picked up by police for a probation violation the day before his son died.

“I was in a jail cell when my son passed away," he said. "That broke me. I said, ‘I’m done.’”

Since 2012, Johnson-Santiago has organized a toy drive each year in his son’s memory. Distribution of toys to the community from Lil Ruben’s 8th Annual Toy Drive was planned for the weekend at The Church at 207 Bank St.

Johnson-Santiago also has been speaking to youth, trying to be the role model he never had.

It’s where Kevin Booker Jr., a motivational speaker and New London city councilor met him a few years back. Johnson-Santiago joined Booker Jr. at Clark Lane Middle School in Waterford to speak to students.

“He talked about the trial and tribulations he had overcome and how he got to the point where he is today,” Booker Jr. said. “It was about not allowing your circumstances to define who you are as a person. That resonated with me."

“When I think of Ruben Santiago I think of a selfless individual who does what it takes to motivate everyone, it doesn’t matter race, class or background," he said. "He has a really good heart ... a fantastic individual.”

Johnson-Santiago said his wife, Miosotys Santiago, is a big part of his life and motivation. She is a motivational speaker, author and founder of Exemplify to Edify who overcame her own life challenges.

g.smith@theday.com