QUANTICO, VA — Last week, Interstate 95 in Virginia was shut down for nearly 50 miles due to massive snowstorms. Ron Hill, a truck driver from Maryland who was making a delivery for his client Schmidt Baking Co., was one of the people stuck in a long line of halted vehicles. He didn’t expect to spend nearly 24 hours in the shutdown, and certainly not to get caught in a whirlwind of national media attention for feeding the other cold and hungry travelers in the crisis.
Casey Holihan Hoe and her husband, John, were just a few vehicles behind Hill. The couple had been traveling to visit family before John moved to Germany, where he would be stationed in the Air Force for the next four years. After hours without access to food or water, the Noes noticed Hill’s bakery delivery truck and decided to take a leap of faith. They called Schmidt Baking Co. directly and got permission from Chuck Paterakis, co-owner of the brand’s parent company H&S Bakery, to have Hill distribute the contents of the truck.
“The young lady came up to my truck, with Chuck on the phone, and I was more than obliged to open [the truck] up,” Hill said in an exclusive call with Commercial Baking. “I handed out the bread, and what amazed me is that they waited for everybody else. Casey and John were actually the last ones to take their bread.”
Hill was grateful to be in the right place at the right time. For him, the whole day felt serendipitous.
“I usually don’t drive in the snow like that, but I felt peace while I was driving. Some truckers have a fear about the ice. Any other time, I would too. But that day, I didn’t,” he said. “My wife was shocked that I was going to go out. I said, ‘Well, there must be a reason why.’ And now I know why I was meant to be out there.”
While Hill doesn’t work directly for Schmidt Baking Co., the 100-year-old, family-owned baking company has been one of his company’s clients for more than a decade. “We’re like a family,” he said.
Hill has been shocked at the amount of attention this small act of kindness has received. It’s just something that Hill believes he — and the Schmidt Baking Co. team — would do any day, since community support is one of their deepest shared values.
But this day wasn’t the craziest Hill has experienced in his driving history. Like John Noe, he also has a military background. Having spent 10 years in the US Army, and being stationed in places like Italy, Germany and Korea, Hill is a seasoned veteran with experience driving military trucks and transporting secret documents across Europe.
“People were so amazed at what we were doing,” Hill recalled of passing out the potato rolls to the other drivers, who ranged from young kids to the elderly, who hadn’t eaten in hours. “I’m just glad I was there. It was like fate.”
