"Someone put a call out for a feeding event asking for bananas to supplement, so me and my kids were like, 'Yeah, let's get bananas,' thinking we were going to drive down to some well-organized event," she remembers. "We drive around forever, there's nobody but a bunch of refugees, a bunch of kids, we don't know where this event is supposed to be, we don't know what we're supposed to do or what's happening."
Ryall tells Westword she thought she was going to be able to drive up to the converted migrant sheltering facility at 2601 Zuni Street — run by the City and County of Denver — and be able to just "hand a bag of bananas to a social worker or something and feel like I did my part." Instead, she and dozens of migrants were left to try and figure out how to drop off and take the donations on their own.
"We pull over, and we're like, 'Let's just hand out bananas,'" Ryall recalls. She and her two kids did just that, linking up with Venezuelan kids "with no shoes on, kids with no jackets on. And then here come all the moms."
Ryall, an active member of Highlands Mommies — a 3,000-strong group of moms that has been around for more than a decade, supporting their community in northwest Denver — was floored by the sight. It led her to use her mommy connections to start the Facebook group Highlands Moms & Neighbors - Venezuelan Migrant Support to organize events to help migrants like the ones she saw at the Quality Inn.
"There's moms with babies in arms, kids all around them, moms literally just like me who are hungry and cold and who are asking me to help them get clothes for their kids," she says, adding that many were asking her for work. "They're incredibly kind and gracious. They really feel just like me. They feel like my community. They're normal, everyday people like we are, and they need help so badly."
"There's moms with babies in arms, kids all around them, moms literally just like me who are hungry and cold and who are asking me to help them get clothes for their kids," she says, adding that many were asking her for work. "They're incredibly kind and gracious. They really feel just like me. They feel like my community. They're normal, everyday people like we are, and they need help so badly."
Currently, about 1,700 migrants are housed in "non-city" facilities across Denver, according to the city's migrant dashboard. That number is down from more than 3,000 in early October.
In northwest Denver, the Highlands Mommies have tried to make the community better for residents — including migrants — any way they can, from holiday gift drives to busting heroin dealers.
They're such a tight-knit and influential group that they've even been called the "Highland Mafia."
Right now, though, the most urgent need that the group sees is the flood of desperation pouring out from the Quality Inn shelter from Venezuelan families that need clothes, jobs and fresh food. Ryall has stepped in over the past two weeks to use her connections with the Highlands Mommies to organize a series of events aimed at improving the lives of Venezuelan migrants by providing basic necessities.
On November 12, she hosted a pair of pop-up events; one was a clothes drive at Valdez Elementary School on West 29th Avenue that collected and doled out much-needed pants, shirts, jackets and diapers for sixty Venezuelan families; the other was a pop-up barbershop that Ryall organized to help two migrants in particular, Carlos Majano and Manuel Salazar, who worked as barbers in their native Venezuela and met at the Quality Inn.
About fifty people came out to get haircuts from Majano and Salazar. The cuts were offered for free, but a $20 donation was suggested. The average donation that people gave was $40, Ryall says.
The Highlands Mommies came up with the idea after Ryall connected with Majano and Salazar's wives, Angel Jimenez and Neidira Lopez, during the banana drop-off. "Neidira was out there with her pregnant belly, and she had an ultrasound, and she didn't know how she was going to get there," Ryall remembers. "I picked her up and took her to Denver Health for her appointment, and I just kind of stayed connected."
Describing Ryall, Lopez tells Westword: "Andrea is an angel. I'm very grateful to her, everything she does with her family."
Despite being six months pregnant — and having a two-year-old daughter — she and her husband, Salazar, were required to leave the Quality Inn on November 16. That was because migrant families with kids can only stay for 37 days at the shelter, and fourteen if they're single or don't have kids.
Similarly, Jimenez and Majano, her husband, have to move out of the shelter by Thanksgiving, but they're applying to move into housing provided by Papagayo, a local nonprofit. Despite the tough luck with finding housing, they're also grateful for the help they've received.
"We're completely grateful right now for how we've been received, for everyone who has helped us," Majano says. "Too many of us from Venezuela are in the street right now."
"We're completely grateful right now for how we've been received, for everyone who has helped us," Majano says. "Too many of us from Venezuela are in the street right now."
"She organized this [pop-up barbershop] to help a little, because the day that we have to leave the shelter is coming up," Jimenez says. "And we're getting all the money to stay on our feet, not end up in the street, to help a little."
Ryall also planned two other events this week to support Venezuelan migrants with cash donations: both storytimes where migrant mothers read to children in Spanish at the Woodbury Branch Library, 3265 Federal Boulevard. The first, on November 16, brought in $220 in donations; about ten families attended. Ryall says it was "a great amount of money for reading a few stories." The next one will be on Saturday, November 18, from 2 to 4 p.m.
Even though Ryall and the Highlands Mommies are more than happy to help as many migrants as they can, she's still irked that governments and nonprofits with better resources and more experience aren't doing the job that most people expect them to do, she says.
"We're trying to provide services that, really, someone else is supposed to be providing. Where's the state getting involved?" Ryall asks. “I’m not someone who’s ever worked with an unhoused population. That’s not my MO. I really am just a mom."
