By Juan Montoya
When Zeke Silva and Mike Garza were helping the City Of Brownsville with the collection of non-perishable foods, bottled water and and other articles needed by the victims of Hurricane Harvey, they were told that if someone had a food truck, it would greatly help the distribution of food to Houston residents affected by Hurricane Harvey.
Silva had already loaned two large trailers to the city to carry the collected donation to San Antonio and then on to the residents in the coastal Bend.
Garza had a food truck and both men filled it with buns, hamburgers and hot dogs and traveled to the affected areas to fee the people. Two blown out tires later, they traveled to the impacted area.
"You don't get an idea of the impact of the hurricane until you actually see what it did to the peope there," Silva said. "We went through a neighborhood where houses worth into the millions had water up to the second story. You can imagine what it did to smaller homes."
One the first night, they fed more than 400 people and the later drove another 350 miles to the Lakewood Rescue Center and set up the truck and started feeding the people. The center is run by Dr. Paul Osteen, brother of megachurch pastor Joel Osteen.(That's Mike cooking up the burgers in the food truck grill in the photo.)
In his Facebook post, Silva said they were well received at the center and the people appreciated their help.
The supplies were bought with money from their own pockets.
Silva is the owner of S&M Transport, a trucking company, and is also administrative assistant to Cameron County Pct. 2 commissioner Alex Dominguez.