Hometown Heroes

Meet four people nominated for their good works.

Story by Danita Allen Wood and Andrea Kanko.

What makes a small town is the people who fill it. It’s not the lonely traffic light or quaint historic downtown, but rather the people who have become a community that relies on each other. It’s the neighbor who leaves a homemade lasagna on your stoop after your pet of 10 years has passed away, the post office worker who makes an effort to welcome you by name, and the teenager who volunteers instead of hanging out with friends on a Friday night. What makes small towns special is the people who go out of their way to take care of their neighbors. These four hometown heroes exemplify this kind of care for the people of their small towns.

Kindness Was Always in Stock
Connie Cashion was nominated by Cindy Baker from Fulton.

For years, people in the Fulton area knew that if they needed something they couldn’t afford, there was one shop they could go to.

They could walk into Connie Cashion’s From His House to Your House Free Store in Fulton.

It was an unusual shop. There were no cash registers, no price tags, and no questions about whether a person needed help. Instead, owner Connie Cashion handed visitors a shopping bag and invited them to browse the clothes, dishes, toiletries, toys, household goods, and furniture.

Connie shared smiles, hugs, and jokes. Some days, she wore silly wigs. Other times, she would burst into song and insist shoppers sing along. A mounted singing fish named Big Mouth Billy Bass became part of the fun.

That mattered.

“It’s so important. Don’t just give them something,” Connie says. “Make them feel human. Nobody reaches up higher if you feel like nothing. Feel seen. Don’t feel invisible. They’re human. They’re equal.”

Today, Connie is 71 and retired from running the store she built almost entirely through determination and the donations of goods—she refused to take cash. The store is now closed; the right person never stepped up to replace her when she was ready to retire. But over her nearly two decades of running the store, Connie quietly became a hero in Callaway County.

She got the idea for the store while volunteering at a soup kitchen. Connie noticed people needed more than a hot meal. They needed diapers, clothes, bread, cookware, and furniture. She started collecting whatever items schools discarded that students had left behind after the semesters ended and whatever neighbors no longer needed, then packed her little Honda Accord until it was overflowing.

“If the Lord calls you to a job, you do it,” Connie says with a laugh. “I couldn’t mess up handing out used underwear too much, could I?”

For the rst 10 years, she operated entirely from her car and a collection of storage units, delivering necessities to people leaving prison, recovering from addiction, escaping homelessness, or starting over after losing everything. Eventually, the Fulton Housing Authority offered her a building rent-free. The utilities were paid for too. This was just what she had been dreaming of: a place where there could be cubbies for children’s clothing, a large room for adult clothes, and shelves stocked with shampoo, deodorant, and other everyday essentials. This building had room for it all.

Connie estimates she helped about 1,000 families each year. Families received not just clothing but dishes, silverware, shower curtains, furniture—anything needed to make an empty house feel like home. Her ministry was full of surprises.

She learned about a man in Honduras who had lost a leg, and one day, she happened to acquire a prosthetic leg, arm, and hand donated by veterans. She connected the man with the prosthetic leg, and a firm in Michigan modified it for free. Later, she received photographs of the man walking down a mountain to his village while carrying spring water.

For Connie, stories like that weren’t coincidences.

“God provided,” she says. Time after time, that’s exactly what happened. When she prayed for cleaning supplies during the pandemic, they poured in. When her aging Honda gave out, someone donated a pickup truck. When she needed volunteers, they appeared.

Ask Connie about her accomplishments, however, and she quickly shifts the credit to God and others.

“I didn’t do anything,” she insists. “The community came together. A lot of people trusted me.”

Perhaps that’s why the Free Store became more than a place to pick up necessities.

She mentions families coming into the store in search of a white shirt and black pants required for a kid’s band concert, which they couldn’t afford. Connie understands what it is like not to have enough money. She and her husband raised six children, often earning just enough to miss qualifying for public assistance but still struggling to make ends meet. “We were always just above welfare and never had that support,” she says. “Everybody has hit a spot in their life that was rough.”

That conviction shaped every decision she made and the thousands of lives she touched while running the store.

“The greatest gift we handed out was never the free merchandise. It was making sure everyone who walked through the door remembered they mattered.”

Bringing Sumner School Back to Life
Daniel Bruce and Chequita Hinkle (pictured in the opening photo) were nominated by Sarah Smith from Hallsville.

On some days, just down the hill from where former riverboat captains built big, luxurious homes, you might hear the sounds of construction—hammers, saws, and volunteers helping out at Sumner School in Boonville. Sumner was a segregated school where Black children were educated until integration closed its doors. For siblings Daniel Bruce and Chequita Hinkle, every new window installed and every repaired ceiling represents something much larger than a renovation project.

“We want to keep our history here,” Chequita says. “We wanted a place where both youth and seniors could come, a place where family and friends come together. We want to be more unified.”

The brother-and-sister team estimates the project is now about 75 percent complete. The list of improvements is long: new windows, a restored gym floor, mold remediation, electrical work, ceiling repairs, tuck-pointing brickwork, and roof repairs. Much of this has been funded through grants, tax credits, and donations, and volunteers have worked countless hours. Even so, the needs are still great. A new HVAC system is just one example.

Their dream extends far beyond preserving an old building.

Chequita and Dan envision Sumner becoming a community hub filled with activities. They hope to offer art classes, public speaking courses, writing programs, family activities, senior gatherings, and youth events. A few rooms are already filled with musical instruments, and a stage awaits aspiring thespians. They also plan to rent out the building for private events to help fund their vision.

“The young people into sports seem to do okay,” Dan says, as the local schools offer several sports programs. “But what about those who aren’t into sports?” Chequita adds. “Some want to write. Some want to tell stories.”

Older residents are equally important to Dan and Chequita’s vision. “Our mom is 91,” he says. “I see people coming here, learning, and appreciating each other, and young people getting to know the older ones and their stories.”

For Chequita and Dan, this project is as much about helping to heal a community as it is about restoring a historic school.

“Families coming together, that’s what it’s about,” Dan says. “People have a lot of stress. We want this to be a place where people can come. Our goal is to make it free.”

Along their journey, churches, businesses, foundations, and neighbors have joined the effort to restore the school. Veterans United Foundation, Alliant Bank, UMB Bank, First Christian Church, and many others have contributed money, materials, or labor.

“They’ve been great sponsors,” Dan says. “We wish we could get even more people involved.”

The restored school will also tell the stories of those who first walked its halls. The siblings are planning to create a history museum room filled with photographs, yearbooks, artifacts, and recorded interviews with former students to protect their memories.

“We never knew all the history here,” Dan says. “We want our grandkids to be able to come here and learn it.”

Making Houses Homes
The People Organized to Revitalize Community Healing Initiative was nominated by Terry Baker from Jackson.

Tameka Randle has made it her life’s mission to provide a solid foundation—literally—for people in need.

Tameka is the chief executive director of the People Organized to Revitalize Community Healing (PORCH) Initiative, which aims to provide education, wellness, and housing to the residents of South Cape Girardeau. The goal of the nonprofit is to revitalize the neighborhood, starting with providing residents access to safe and secure housing. So far, three houses have been revitalized, and three more are in process.

“We have a rubric system set up for identifying properties. Are they in our boundary area? Is it the worst of the worst?” Tameka says. “We don’t want to push anyone out, and so we make sure they’re empty, sometimes on the verge of being condemned by the city.”

Through the initiative, roofs, decking, siding, plumbing, electrical, flooring, drywall, foundations, and, of course, porches are repaired. Then the homes are inspected, appraised, and sold to families in need. Unlike organizations like Habitat for Humanity, Tameka says, hired contractors do the renovations, rather than volunteers.

“Once they are complete, we sell them—many times well under what we have in them—to buyers who can qualify for a mortgage and who purchase homes with lenders,” she says. “PORCH does not give away homes or do seller financing.”

Besides renovating homes, PORCH also educates first-time homebuyers and provides them assistance with down payments and inspection fees. Since 2023, the organization has helped 10 families gain access to housing.

“I believe in partnering with people and providing them a hand up, not a handout,” Tameka says.

Over her five years of working with PORCH, Tameka has helped raise over a million dollars for the organization, which is primarily funded through private donations.

Tameka moved from Ohio to Missouri 20 years ago to coach basketball for Southeast Missouri State University. She has an undergraduate degree in education and a graduate degree in public administration. She is also the commissioner for the Missouri Housing Development Commission and a councilwoman for Cape Girardeau.

“Every area that I’ve ever worked in has always been in a service or education or training-type area,” Tameka adds. “It just evolved, as I evolved. I always want to be a voice for our community, our state, and so I’ve always been passionate about helping people.”

Tameka emphasizes helping people build generational wealth. About 80 percent of residents are renters, so they don’t have assets or “anything to leave their family or their children,” Tameka says. She works to decrease the number of renters in the area “one house at a time, and eventually, a block at a time.”

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This article was orginally printed in the September 2026 issue of Missouri Life.