Fort Worth woman doesn’t see helping those in need as a job. For her, it’s a calling.
When Nakia Cole saw a woman get off a city bus carrying groceries, she stopped to give the person a ride home.
When she sees children out when they should be in school, she asks why.
Helping people is not just a job for Cole, who coordinates services for children, their families and others in need at the Fort Worth school district’s Family Action Center. For her, it is a calling.
The Family Action Center is an initiative that allows for the delivery of client services and referrals that include community resources for food, shelter and job security for residents, particularly those within the Eastern Hills and Dunbar High School attendance zones.
Cole’s compassion became even more important when the pandemic hit in March as she helped organize food deliveries for needy families and helped people find resources for housing and other assistance.
“So many think they know what people need,” Cole said.
They aren’t always looking for a handout, they are often looking for a hand up, she said.
Steve Gay, who retired from the Fort Worth school district, nominated Cole for recognition in the Star-Telegram’s Hometown Heroes series. He said she goes above and beyond to help people in need without looking at where they are from and other factors.
“Love is who she is,” he said. “She doesn’t let any kind of parameters stop her from reaching people in need.”
Hometown Heroes is sponsored by Lockheed Martin,which is providing $1,000 each to the 28 people selected by the Star-Telegram to be featured in the weekly series.
Cole said helping people is ingrained in her, as she went to church with her mother and grandmother. When she was growing up, she would visit her elderly neighbors to get lists of what they needed.
Then Cole and her mother would bring them groceries.
“It was instilled in me to take care of others, especially elderly people,” she said.
“As I got older, I began to see people needing help, and no one was helping them,” Cole said.
Cole graduated from Trimble Tech High School and Abilene Christian University.
At Abilene Christian, Cole said she learned to “meet people where they are.”
Before the pandemic, Cole said she organized providing food boxes for needy families in conjunction with other events twice during the semester, but now, she delivers food twice a week.
The Family Action Center also formed a partnership with Generation Uplift, a United Way initiative that delivers food boxes to apartment complexes in the Las Vegas Trail and North Side neighborhoods.
Cole’s supervisor, Carlos Walker, director of the Family Action Center, said Cole doesn’t see helping those in need as “just a job.”
“She is a very passionate person,” Walker said. “What we do as a job, she does with her life.”
Walker described a situation when a woman needed a place to stay. She could not rent an apartment because of an eviction on her record, so Cole rented an apartment in her name for the woman.
Walker said he often teases Cole, calling her “detective Cole. If she sees children who are not in school, she will ask what they are doing and why they are not in class.”
“Nakia does things most people would not do to help others. She is fortunate that she found a job to do what she would do on a daily basis,” Walker said.
This story was originally published November 22, 2020 at 5:45 AM.