This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Hopefully you all have seen this by now, but earlier this week Ryan McDonald of the Daily Utah Chronicle, the student newspaper at the University of Utah, wrote a story about members of the Utah men's basketball team making sandwiches and delivering them to the homeless in Pioneer Park.
According to McDonald, the weekly endeavor was started by senior guard Jarred DuBois, a transfer from Loyola Marymount, who is very familiar with homelessness: His father lives in a car in Los Angeles, despite having a full time job, in order to financially assist family members.
"Everybody's story is different," DuBois told the Chronicle. "You don't know why they are in that situation. A lot of people assume that they are dumb or on drugs, but stuff happens. I'm homeless back home so when I go home it affects me personally. My dad has a full-time job but still lives in the car. So you don't know a random person on the street, you don't assume that he's on drugs. You don't know what happened to him."
Well, attention is now spreading beyond the program and the University. ESPN college basketball writer Andy Katz included the story in a blog post. He said it was proof that "there is something genuine and kind going on with the Utah men's basketball team."
It's good press for the Utes, which haven't gotten much of it in recent years. The Utes also had an uptick in PR on Thursday when junior college guard Delon Wright committed to the program.
— Bill Oram