08/04/2026
We are so proud of Sophia What an amazing young lady ! We can’t wait to see all the wonderful things she does in the future
BELOW IS THE ARTICLE FROM COAL REGION CANARY
Sofia Gonzalez could have gone to Hersheypark today.
That was the plan for the Mahanoy City girl’s 10th birthday until she brought her mother a different idea: Let’s feed those in need.
“Let’s celebrate my birthday with everyone else,” is how her mother, Alyssa Gonzalez, remembers her putting it.
So on Friday, instead of roller coasters, Sofia – Sofi to most everyone who knows her – was at the Schuylkill Recovery Center in downtown Pottsville, handing out hot dogs, chips, popcorn bags and four boxes’ worth of brownies she’d baked alongside her friend, Reagan Schuckers, of Frackville.
It is the second time Sofia’s done this for her birthday. The first was a couple years ago, when she turned seven, and the idea came to her while she attended a Phillies game.
“We were in Philadelphia, going to a Phillies game, and I saw homeless people digging through the trash,” Sofi said. “That kind of just gave me an idea to do that.”
She sees it closer to home, too, she said. And what she thought, watching it, was simple enough.
“They need actual food,” she said, “and not just trash from the trash can.”
Her mother is careful about who gets credit.
“I would love to say I helped her,” Alyssa said. “I mean, I drove her here and there. But she’s the one who puts the bread out, puts the sandwich meat on. She browns hot dogs.”
She had help from her best friend, Reagan Schuckers, of Frackville, who baked alongside her. Picking a friend to bring in is part of the ritual, her mother said, a way of spreading the idea around about the importance of helping others.
“Reagan’s such a selfless kid, too,” Alyssa said. “We asked her about it and she’s like, ‘Absolutely, let’s do it.'”
“Some people don’t really have meals to eat, and if you just give them something, it will make their day,” Schuckers said. “It feels good to make someone’s day like that.”
Sofia thought about the details, too. The brownies had peanut butter in them, so the popcorn bags were there for anyone with a peanut allergy.
The location for today’s lunch wasn’t incidental. Alyssa Gonzalez is a caseworker at the Center for Community Resources, the Pottsville walk-in center where the county’s Schuylkill Recovery Center is housed.
Sofi’s own reasoning was more direct: more people come through the doors here.
“I wanted more people to come so I could help more people than a couple years ago,” she said.
Later in the day, with a little food left over, the crew from Sofi’s birthday party took to the streets downtown to hand out the extras.
Underneath the birthday story is something Alyssa said she keeps running into: a kid who wants to volunteer, in a county with very few doors open to one.
Sofi looks for it constantly, her mother said, whether it’s at the softball field, T-ball, soccer, anywhere.
“Unfortunately, there’s not many places around here that you can volunteer as a kid,” she said. “If you want to have a volunteer effort and give back to your community, you have to kind of put something together yourself.”
Sofi says she’s less nervous when it comes to giving back now than she was a few years ago.
“When I turned seven, I was nervous,” she said. “Now I’ve learned not to be nervous — that it’s just a normal thing, that you have to help others.”
Asked what she hopes kids her age take from it, she didn’t hesitate.
“I want them to think that they don’t have to sit on their phones all the time, and to get outside and help people in need,” she said. “A lot of teenagers and kids my age, they’re just on their phones. And I want them to think, ‘Wow, she’s actually making a difference.'”
The meal isn’t the only thing on her list. Sofi is going into fifth grade at Assumption BVM School in Pottsville, where she’s already pitched the principal on starting a diversity club, an idea that came out of watching the movie ‘Ruby Bridges’ on a day home from school.
She retells it the way a 10-year-old does, which is to say accurately: a little girl who went to a school where people spat at her, and a teacher who saw she was smart and taught her more than she already knew. Between that and cheerleading for the Mahanoy Bears, basketball in Girardville, softball with the Frackville Fury, a travel team out of Lebanon and the math club, her mother has stopped being surprised.
“She’s 10 years old, starting clubs and having all these ideas,” Alyssa said. “And she has no problem putting in the work to get it done, either.”
Sofi says she wants to be a paleontologist. Also to own a house with a hair salon in it, like her aunt. Also, she says, 17 kids, though she seems to be changing her mind on that a bit lately.
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