Local pensioner shares love with the needy
WITKOPPEN– Heidi Muller is dedicated to providing food parcels to the non-profit organisation every week.
A 75-year-old Witkoppen resident cannot sleep until she has donated groceries to community organisation Daily Bread every week.
At the age of 25, Heidi Muller left her country of birth, Germany in 1971 to start a new life away from her family and friends in a country that she knew nothing about.
Muller said she was unable to enjoy her sleep at night if she had not made a little difference to someone’s life. To escape this insomnia, Muller donates groceries worth hundreds of rands every week to Daily Bread which helps feed thousands of people in poor communities in regions A and E in Johannesburg.
Muller said, “I feel like I have a responsibility to be a mother to someone who I can help and feed every day.
“Giving has been part of our lives, me and my late husband. We met on my arrival in South Africa at then Jan Smuts International Airport now OR Tambo International Airport.”
She added, “We spent our lives together until he passed away in 1999. We did not have children of our own but we decided that we will become parents to those in need.”
In 2018, Muller was attacked by a robber while enjoying a walk with her dog and spent more than three months in hospital. This was the second time she had suffered a traumatic experience.
“I had previously been hijacked of my car before the recent robbery in which I was stabbed, beaten and left to die by someone who robbed me of my phone while walking my dog at an open space between Chartwell and Diepsloot.
“I suffered terrible head and hands injuries. I spent months in hospital recovering from injuries and I had to abandon my house for months because of trauma that I was going through after that terrible experience.”
Muller added that despite the trauma, she would never stop helping others. “I am so grateful that the incident didn’t take away my passion to care for others although someone tried to do so.”
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