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Pizzeria owner spots people eating from his dumpster, and has an entirely unexpected response

“I don't even know how to start this but here goes..Please do not eat out of our dumpster."

Heights Pizza Man/Facebook

A photo of the pizza left out for anyone who needed it along with a thank-you letter

After Chris Kolstad, owner of Heights Pizza Man in Columbia Heights, Minnesota, noticed more and more people fishing out pizzas from his dumpster, he decided it was time to take action. Not out of spite, but out of kindness.

On a Facebook post, Kolstad wrote:

“I don't even know how to start this post but here goes..Recently, we've noticed a rapidly increasing volume of evidence of people eating out of our dumpster. Please do not eat out of our dumpster. Nobody deserves that.

heights pizza man, pizza, pizza delivery, pizza near me, kindness, free pizza Kolstad's first Facebook postHeights Pizza Man/Facebook

If you are that desperate for food, please come ask. If you are too embarrassed to ask, find a way to call us and ask if there is a way to leave a small cheese pizza outside the back door or something. You don't even have to see us. If you are the ones doing so, leave me a note and we will find a way to leave any extras or mistakes out back so you have something to eat without going through the trash.

If you see this, I will be leaving a cheese pizza outside the back door in the spot you've been leaving boxes.”

Sure enough, Kolstad showed a picture of the cheese pizza left in the back, free to whoever needed it.

heights pizza man, pizza, pizza delivery, pizza near me, kindness, free pizza A photo of the cheese pizza left out by Kolstad.Heights Pizza Man/Facebook

But that’s not where the story ends. In fact, it was only the beginning. Pretty soon, other businesses began offering help as well. And when Kolstad put up a Venmo donation link that would go to fund local organizations that support people in need, individuals chipped in too, to the tune of $4,000.

One of the organizations being helped is Southern Anoka Community Assistance (SACA), a nonprofit food shelf that serves 55,000 individuals each year, giving out over 950,000 pounds of food annually, according to this website.

Kolstad would later post a handwritten thank-you letter he received from one of the anonymous families he fed, which commended him for helping those who are “struggling.”

heights pizza man, pizza, pizza delivery, pizza near me, kindness, free pizza A thank you note written by one of the families Pizza Man helped. Heights Pizza Man/Facebook

“What you guys are doing is amazing…this act of kindness from you to our family is so appreciated.”

“This is why we do what we do,” Kolstad wrote in the caption.

Needless to say, people who saw this story were more than a little uplifted.

“One small act of kindness can change the entire community. Here is the proof. Thank you for what you are doing, it’s so inspiring and I hope other businesses follow your lead.”

“One of the best things in the world is people helping people, thank you Pizza Man!”

“That is so awesome of you to acknowledge what’s happening and offer to help people without putting them in a situation that might make someone feel uncomfortable and offer alternatives. When I was in high school I worked at a pizza place and they always kept all of the mistake pizzas & leftover pizzas from the buffet, and set them aside for a local food shelf & homeless shelter. You guys are the best!”

Here’s to the business owners just like Kolstad, who never forget to put compassion first.

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Trump is tweeting about himself and not the Minnesota mosque bombing. That matters.

An improvised explosive device detonated at a Bloomington, Minnesota, mosque on the morning of Aug. 5.

The attack is the latest in a series of anti-Muslim incidents that have rocked the state — 14 in 2016 alone, according to the Star-Tribune.

Thankfully, no one was hurt.

Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton called the bombing an "act of terror."

Minnesota Council of Churches CEO Rev. Curtiss DeYoung called it an "attack on all faith communities."

Steve Hunegs, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, released a statement affirming his organization's "solidarity with the local Muslim community."

President Trump, meanwhile ... has yet to say anything at all.

Instead, the president spent Monday morning tweeting about his accomplishments in office, news coverage he doesn't like, and Sen. Richard Blumenthal's misrepresentation of his Vietnam war service.

Much of Twitter was outraged at the president's silence.

The president isn't always slow to condemn terror — and that's the problem.

Trump issued statements immediately following two terror attacks — carried out by Muslim assailants — that rocked London earlier this year. The day of last year's mass shooting at Orlando's Pulse nightclub, Trump took credit for predicting the carnage, noting that he  "[appreciated] the congrats" for being "right" about "radical Islamic  terror."

Photo by Gerardo Mora/Getty Images.

Meanwhile, the president waited over a week to condemn the alleged hate-crime killing of an Indian immigrant engineer in Kansas, and even longer to denounce a series of attacks on Jewish cemeteries earlier this year.

When Muslims perpetrate terror attacks, Trump's response is frequently deafening and swift. When Muslims, immigrants, and members of other vulnerable groups are victims, his response is very often silence.

Not speaking out when an attack doesn't comport with a pre-scripted hero-villain narrative doesn't just make a mockery of the truth — it carries with it an implication that some Americans are more equal than others.

His silence leaves the door open to further bias-driven incidents, and it functions, knowingly or not, as a wink toward those who might carry them out. A report from the Council on American-Islamic Relations found that anti-Muslim bias crimes jumped 57% in 2016, a period roughly coinciding with the last presidential election.

President Trump's unwillingness to speak out makes America less safe — and less great.

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images.

In a large, messy, diverse society such as ours, an attack on one isn't just an attack on all — it's an attack on the very principles our country was founded on.

It's a miracle that no one was injured in the Bloomington blast. Next time, we might not be so lucky.

The president needs to get the message before too much damage is done — both to the American people and the American idea.

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After the Philando Castile verdict, his classmates raised thousands in scholarship money.

High school classmates of Philando Castile were gutted last week when the police officer who killed him on the side of a suburban Minnesota street was found not guilty.

Protesters gathered in November outside the St. Paul school where Philando Castile worked. Stephen Maturen/Getty Images.

In the week since, several of them have turned their outrage into action, raising over $5,000 for a scholarship in Castile's name.

"We really didn’t ask for it. People just didn’t know what to do with their grief and all of that," says Abby Heuckendorf, who went to school with Castile from fourth grade on and is a member of Central Honors Philando, the group that established the fund.

Heuckendorf and a half-dozen others who grew up with Castile established the scholarship fund shortly after his death in 2016 at the suggestion of Central High School's principal.

The small team settled on the scholarship as a fitting tribute to the memory of their classmate who continued to work in the school district where they grew up as a much-beloved kitchen employee — known to students as "Phil" — for 14 years.

The money raised in the days following the verdict adds to the over $45,000 that Central Honors Philando has raised in Castile's name since the shooting.

"It still feels like losing somebody in your larger family circle," Heukendorf says.

The first scholarship grant was awarded to Marques Watson-Taylor, a 2017 Central graduate who the group selected based on an application that the committee felt accorded with Castile's background and values.

Philando Castile's mother Valerie, left, and sister Allysza with scholarship recipient Marques Watson-Taylor. Photo by Central Honors Philando/Facebook.

The committee has raised over $45,000 since

The group was planning to kick off a fundraising campaign — culminating in an outdoor community event in August — for next year's award when the verdict came down.

"It was like, 'Oh, we’re back to square one,'" says Adrian Perryman, a member of the fundraising group whose older brother was a classmate of Castile's at Central High School in St. Paul.

"This is a way for people to help out in a sort of different way, to grieve as well as give back."
— Adrian Perryman

After a brief statement on Facebook condemning the verdict, donations to Central Honors Philando began pouring in organically — enough within one week to finance next year's scholarship.

The group still plans to hold the fundraising event in August, which will include food, art projects, and performances in memory of Castile's life.

Attendees at last year's fundraising event listen to a musical performance. Photo by Central Honors Philando/Facebook.

In addition to those events, the group will honor individuals who work behind the scenes to support local schools, inspired by Castile's dedication to the district's students.

All proceeds from the event will support the scholarship, with the goal of helping more Central High students take the next step in their education.

"Not everybody wants to protest," Perryman explains. "Not everybody is able to do certain things. Not everybody can camp out at their elected official's office all week and whatnot, so this is a way for people to help out in a sort of different way, to grieve as well as give back."

Devastated but not defeated by his case's resolution, Castile's neighbors may yet get justice by establishing a small semblance of it for the next generation.

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She competed in a hijab and burkini, making Miss Minnesota history at 19.

For the first time in the pageant's history, a contestant wore a burkini during the swimsuit segment.

She was born in a Kenyan refugee camp. Then, at 6 years old, Halima Aden and her family moved to Minnesota.

Minnesota is home to one of the largest Somali communities in the U.S. As such, Aden grew up surrounded by lots of other Muslim women and girls. What she saw in the media, however, didn't match her own experience growing up in America.

"As long as I could remember, the media portrays Muslim women as oppressed and in a very negative light,” she told Huffington Post in an interview this November. “But you never see the beauty and the good things that come from Muslim women.”

Now 19 years old, Aden entered the Miss Minnesota USA pageant, making a bit of history in the process.

Like many pageants, Miss Minnesota USA has a swimsuit competition. Rather than wearing a one-piece suit or bikini like the other contestants, Aden did something completely different: She wore a burkini.

Photo by Leila Navidi/Minneapolis Star Tribune/ TNS via ZUMA Wire.

The word "burkini" is a portmanteau of the words "burqa" and "bikini," and it is essentially a full-coverage wetsuit worn by some Muslim women for personal or religious reasons.

"This is a great platform to show the world who I am," she told Minnesota Public Radio before the competition. "Just because I've never seen a woman wearing a burkini (in a pageant) it doesn't mean that I don't have to be the first."

Burkinis, which were invented a little over a decade ago, were designed to ensure that Muslim children wouldn't miss out on swimming and other activities.

What began as little more than a sensible solution that allowed children to observe their religion while taking part in activities with their peers soon turned into a controversy.

Some towns in France have banned burkinis, citing a number of concerns about safety, secularism, and an argument against the patriarchy, claiming that the suits are oppressing women. The truth is, however, that someone in a burkini does not present a threat to anyone else's safety, it's not an act of evangelism, and many women choose to wear it — just as many women choose to wear bikinis.

Australian-Lebanese designer Aheda Zanetti created the burkini. Photo by Saeed Khan/AFP/Getty Images.

Aden's decision to wear a burkini on stage matters, especially since anti-Muslim sentiment is on the rise in the U.S., with the FBI finding a 67% increase in hate crimes against Muslims in 2015.

In the lead up to — and aftermath of — the 2016 election, U.S. Muslims are facing an increasingly hostile environment. A University of Michigan student claims that a man threatened to set her on fire unless she removed her hijab, there have been multiple instances of women having hijabs pulled off their heads, and a Muslim Uber driver reported being verbally accosted by a complete stranger.

Two days before the election, President-elect Donald Trump told a Minnesota crowd, "You've seen first-hand the problems caused with faulty refugee vetting, with very large numbers of Somali refugees coming into your state without your knowledge, without your support or approval." He then went on to claim that Somali refugees — like Aden — are joining ISIS. This sort of baseless claim is dangerous, and only furthers the growing anti-Muslim feeling.

While Aden didn't win the Miss Minnesota USA competition, her decision to wear her hijab and burkini on stage is a bold display of bravery.

"What I wanted to do was to just give people a different perspective," she told MPR. "We just needed one more thing to unify us. This is a small act, but I feel like having the title of Miss Minnesota USA when you are a Somali-American, when you are a Muslim woman, I think that would open up people's eyes."

Leila Navidi/Minneapolis Star Tribune/ TNS via ZUMA Wire

Maybe seeing Aden on stage meant challenging any preconceived notions people in the audience may have had about Somali-Americans and Muslims. Maybe Aden's act gave courage to other Muslim girls and women who've felt as though they cannot (or should not) be themselves in public.

Personal acts of bravery — even as simple as saying, "I exist" — are crucial in questionable and trying times. By simply existing and participating in the pageant, Aden pushed back against powerful expectations. She may not have won, but she still made a difference.

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