Sterling man is walking 1,000 miles for hunger awareness

Published 10:30 pm Thursday, January 8, 2026

On Christmas morning, 70-year-old Jonathan Reidy woke up in his dry cabin in Sterling to find a cold, clear day. As he does most mornings, he got ready to go for a long walk in the subzero temperatures. The only exception was that this morning, he was wearing a bright red Santa costume as he walked along the Sterling Highway.

By the time he returned to his cabin that evening, Reidy had walked a total of 260 miles since beginning his project, “The 1,000 Mile Walk to Feed the Hungry in America,” in October. As of press time, he’s already walked more than 300 miles. He’s hoping to hit the halfway point of 500 miles by Valentine’s Day, and fulfill the full 1,000 miles by mid-June.

Reidy is asking folks to pledge donations in any amount to a local food bank or feeding program for every one of those miles.

“It’s usually when I get up in the morning and look outside to check the weather that I think, ‘Oh, my God … do I want to really do this?’” Reidy said with a chuckle during an interview Dec. 31. “But then I think about the people I’ve told I’m doing this. I can’t let them down. I just keep reminding myself that even though I don’t know exactly how much people are donating, there are people who are going to be donating, and if I wasn’t doing this walking, they might not donate. So I have to keep walking.”

On the first Monday of every month, he posts the total number of miles he walked during the previous month to the project’s Facebook group and emails anyone who isn’t on social media. From there, it’s up to the individuals to follow through on their pledges.

Reidy’s plan started to formulate shortly after his van broke down in October. He was getting to and from his part-time job in the apparel department at the Fred Meyer in Soldotna by hitching a ride with a coworker, but on Oct. 27, his coworker called in sick, leaving him stranded in Sterling. Reidy picked up the phone and started to call a cab — he wanted to walk on the treadmill at the Fitness Place before making the mile-long walk to Fred Meyer from there.

“And then I thought, ‘Wait a minute, I’m going to spend $33 on a cab to go walk for about four or five miles on a treadmill? Nah, I’ll just walk to work,’” Reidy said. “It was just such a beautiful day and a beautiful walk. I decided I’m going to do this at least three times a week, and I’m going to ask people to donate money for each mile that I walk to local food banks.”

As he began his trek down the Sterling Highway that morning, a car pulled over. The driver, Sterling resident Lance Wortham, asked Reidy if he needed a lift.

“He didn’t want to take a ride,” Wortham told the Clarion on Tuesday. “What he does is pretty amazing, to be honest with you. He was so energetic about it that he wouldn’t even sit in the car.”

Impressed by his commitment, Wortham pledged to donate ten cents for every mile Reidy walked in October, November and December. At the beginning of January, Reidy posted to the Facebook group that he had walked 298 miles so far. True to his word, Wortham donated $28.90 to the Kenai Peninsula Food Bank.

Wortham plans to continue donating to food programs around the borough for at least as long as Reidy continues to walk. The two have become close friends, and Wortham is spreading the word about Reidy’s mission.

“Some people do things with charities just for the money’s sake,” Wortham said. “But Jonny is dedicated to this. Generally, when he’s walking, two or three people will stop and offer him rides, and even more so when it’s cold. But he won’t even consider accepting them. I just want you to know how dedicated he is to this, and truly, truly, what I want you to know is that he is a very nice man.”

Wortham’s sentiments echo what Emma Sanford, Reidy’s manager at Fred Meyer, had to say.

“He’s very compassionate, and he always wants to improve everything he does,” Sanford said Tuesday. “There’s always something he wants to fix. He’s a very hardworking and happy guy.”

Sanford has only known Reidy since he started working at Fred Meyer in September. Before he got his part-time job in the apparel department, Reidy spent the summer working as a volunteer camp host at the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, living in a van he converted to a camper. Last summer was the first time he had been to Alaska, and he became enamored almost immediately.

Reidy described one evening he spent watching the sun set over Hidden Lake. As he watched the fish jump to catch mosquitoes, he heard a noise about twenty yards offshore and spotted a beaver swimming in his direction.

“The beaver got perpendicular to me, looked at me, nodded, looked at me again for a couple seconds, and then turned around and swam back from where it came,” he said. “And that was the moment I said, this is it. I’m staying here.”

Before coming to Alaska, Reidy worked in child welfare services in Miami, Florida for over 30 years, heeding a familial call toward service. Reidy’s brother is also a social worker, and his mother was a flight attendant on Trans World Airlines flights that flew Holocaust survivors to America in 1945. His father was a physician at the Air Force base in Fairbanks during the Korean War, and one of Reidy’s first and most vivid memories was watching his father present a slideshow of images of moose, mountains and snow. Reidy, who was 5 years old at the time, decided then and there he’d live in Alaska someday.

Reidy’s drive to serve others and desire to do so in Alaska are inextricably linked, serving as the foundation of his massive undertaking.

“I’m walking because the dream of Alaska gave me the strength to get here, and now I’m using that strength to give back,” Reidy wrote in a homemade press release announcing his 1,000 mile-long walk.

Reidy hopes to further his impact by partnering with Kroger’s Zero Hunger, Zero Waste foundation in the near future, but for now, he’s relying on word of mouth to spread the news.

To follow along with his endeavor, visit the Facebook group “The 1,000 Mile Walk to Feed the Hungry in America.”