This story is part of a larger feature on 10 do-gooders from Saratoga and the rest of the Capital Region. To meet the other nine honorees and purchase tickets for annual fundraising event, visit our Capital Region Gives Back event page.

When Saratoga’s track meet ran a spectator-less season in 2020, Nancy Underwood’s work at the Backstretch Employee Service Team (BEST) of Saratoga barely slowed down. After all, with the horses still running, the legion of backstretch workers who tend to the Thoroughbreds needed care as well. This year, with Saratoga Race Course back in full swing? Underwood and team toiled day and night, seven days a week, to ensure that all workers not only got the healthcare they needed but also felt part of a tight-knit community.

“Wednesday nights we do Bingo with 300 backstretch workers, and we do Sunday night dinners,” says Underwood, BEST’s Saratoga program director. “It’s how we touch them on a personal level to make sure they know us and will come to us when they need something.”

Those needs run the gamut. The majority of the backstretch workers hail from Spanish-speaking areas, often countries where treating an ailment means simply popping into a pharmacy. Given the US’s confusing healthcare web, BEST operates a unique clinic that assists with everything from injuries to diabetes. If they have to travel for an appointment, the nonprofit secures transportation and a translator.

“One 18-year-old had never been to a doctor and came in with an untreated eye infection that had left him blind in one eye,” Underwood says. “He was a kid from the mountains of Guatemala and was terrified. They fit him with a prosthetic.”

Horse training goes well until November, and BEST works full-time until the very last horse and worker leaves. “We offer the most comprehensive services across the country,” she says. “But when they leave us, how do we prepare them? We make sure that prescriptions are set up for refills, role play asking for things they need. We push at the end of the season so when people come back in April, it’s not a crisis situation.”

This story is part of a larger feature on 10 do-gooders from Saratoga and the rest of the Capital Region. To meet the other nine honorees and purchase tickets for annual fundraising event, visit our Capital Region Gives Back event page.

While BARE Blends cofounder Annie Berdar serves smoothies and salads to working professionals, on-the-go moms and fitness buffs by day, outside of her work at the Capital Region–based franchise, she has her sights set on providing healthy food to other populations. “Back at the beginning of Covid, I learned that most kids rely on the school system for lunches,” says the Saratogian. “I was thinking of ways that I could fill that gap and I came across the café.”

Located, yes, just south of downtown Albany, the South End Children’s Café helps address food insecurity by offering an after-school program where kids can get help with homework, participate in enrichment classes and get a healthy dinner. During the pandemic, Berdar and her BARE Blends staff brought smoothies to the café, and BARE has continued donating food whenever possible.

“We brought a couple of exotic fruits and they loved learning about them and tasting them,” Berdar says of the Children’s Café kids. “When we told them how beneficial fruits and veggies were for them, their eyes just lit up. They were like ‘Wow, I had no idea.’ And kids at that age are so impressionable; when you tell them something like that, that’s something that could stick with them for life.”

Working with the South End Children’s Café inspired Berdar to do more to promote healthy eating habits in the Capital Region: She designed and is in the process of installing interactive Learning Paths with signage about fruits and vegetables in parks around the region, and regularly donates to Albany’s Free Food Fridge. “Food is something we all share and celebrate with,” she says. “It’s something everyone deserves access to.”

This story is part of a larger feature on 10 do-gooders from Saratoga and the rest of the Capital Region. To meet the other nine honorees and purchase tickets for annual fundraising event, visit our Capital Region Gives Back event page.

It’s a special kind of person who dedicates their entire working life to helping others—and Wellspring’s Maggie Fronk is one of those people. This year marks her milestone 20th year as the nonprofit’s executive director; she previously worked in the realms of AIDS, mental illness and homelessness.

During her two decades at Wellspring, an unparalleled domestic violence and sexual assault services resource for Saratoga County, Fronk saw it through the Me Too movement and says the community is now more willing to talk about these issues.

“We’re starting to see some social change,” she says. “Me Too brought awareness, which helped us redefine the people we’ve seen be victimized, because what we saw in Me Too were some very powerful, well-known, articulate women who said, ‘This happened to me.’”

Wellspring mans a 24/7 crisis service hotline and offers essentials such as emergency shelter and accompaniment to police stations, but stresses that survivors who need help even past the crisis point should call them anytime. In addition to counseling, Wellspring keeps its “Well Shop” stocked with items such as American Girl dolls and diapers, and has a crucial rent subsidies housing program to help survivors move on to a home without violence.

“We have bars you can put on your windows if you’re worried your abuser could be trying to break in,” Fronk says. “And last year we gave domestic violence survivors 15,000 pounds of food. They’d moved beyond the abuse but were struggling financially.”

Under Fronk’s innovative leadership, Wellspring also offers a host of new programs to educate community members of all ages about how to better combat and prevent domestic violence and abuse, including Men With Wellspring (just what it sounds like), Raising the Bar that meets with bartenders, and a student athlete program that’s about “coaching boys into men and athletes into leaders” (just to name a few).

“I’d like to see the social change,” Fronk says. “We need to become very attuned to our social norms and challenge them. We’re all learning.”

This story is part of a larger feature on 10 do-gooders from Saratoga and the rest of the Capital Region. To meet the other nine honorees and purchase tickets for annual fundraising event, visit our Capital Region Gives Back event page.

When Dan Graham fostered a rescue Pit Bull in April 2020, he made it less than a day before he gave in and adopted her. “After having her for about 14 hours, the rescue called to tell me that dogs were being adopted very fast and if I was interested in her I needed to speak up,” he says. “I hung up the phone, looked at her face and said, ‘Well, that was quick. Welcome home, pup.’”

Graham adopted Nikka through New York City’s Rescue Dogs Rock, but wanted to get involved with a more local rescue. He heard about Argyle’s Lucky Puppy Rescue, which was hosting a “Pups & Pints” event at Common Roots Brewing. “I went up there, introduced myself and offered to help them raise money,” he says. “And they looked at me like, sure.”

But Graham was a man of his word, and has since hosted fundraisers including a Pups & Pints event at Frog Alley and an outdoor volleyball tournament at East Side Rec. “Two or three dogs got adopted because of the events I ran,” he says. “It’s really, really fulfilling.”

But while seeing puppies get adopted is what warms the heart, Graham says funding is just as important. It takes money to maintain Lucky Puppy’s two pristine farms—one in Florida and one in Washington County—and more money to transport the dogs on school buses from Florida to Argyle two to three times a month. Speaking of the Florida farm, it takes in a lot of pregnant dogs, and therefore the Argyle adoption center has a lot of puppies available (hence the name Lucky Puppy). “Some people think that they’re going to get this old, beat-up dog when they adopt,” Graham says. “There are dogs that are absolutely amazing that are puppies.”

This story is part of a larger feature on 10 do-gooders from Saratoga and the rest of the Capital Region. To meet the other nine honorees and purchase tickets for annual fundraising event, visit our Capital Region Gives Back event page.

When millions of Ukrainian refugees, after running for their lives, found themselves tragically homeless in countries not their own, Adam Israel knew he had to help—and fast. Within weeks of Russia’s initial invasion of the country early this year, Israel was on a flight to neighboring Poland, carrying cards and cash.

In those early days, blurred by fear of the unknown, the hundreds of donated cards Israel passed out at the Ukraine/Poland border delivered messages of hope (hence the initiative’s name “Letters of Hope for Ukraine”)—plus $20 cash. Israel and his wife, Kasia, had years prior organized boxes of supplies to be sent to the (twice) hurricane-ravaged island of St. Thomas. In 2022, cash was more practical: People can donate in seconds via Venmo, and the cash proved the quickest way for refugees to be able to buy exactly what they needed (aided by a favorable exchange rate), after a quick stop at a money exchange.

“My wife is Polish, and we lived there during Covid,” Israel says. “We own a cabin and car there, close to the border, and her brother is there. We had to help.”

Kasia stayed in Saratoga with the couple’s two children, and Israel met hundreds of refugees, passing out his cards and money, wishing people well. On a return trip, he helped drive refugees out of Ukraine and into Poland, with Kasia often on the phone, calming them in Polish. (Each trip took three to six hours.) Now back in Saratoga, there are displaced Ukrainians, living in churches or donated apartments, who need food and a place to live.

“One mom fled with her 4-year-old son as bombs were exploding, and now the kid won’t leave the house without his snow suit on, even during the summer,” Israel says. “A mom and daughter’s home blew up with them in it, and Mom lost an eye. These people fled in terror and now need counseling and healthcare—they have socialized healthcare there, so no one has insurance. And they simply have nowhere to go.”