Cancer Survivor Feeds Homeless Every Sunday in Indio

Every Sunday from January through Easter, Sam Torres sets up tables at Miles Avenue Park in Indio and does something radical. He treats homeless neighbors like dinner guests.

"For the homeless, there's nothing so luxurious as to actually sit at a table to eat a meal," Torres said. The weekly pop-up café, which he calls Sunday Service, started in 2021 as his response to devastating loss.

Torres began the tradition after losing his father to COVID. Instead of letting grief consume him, he found a different path. "Every time life punches you in the heart with that kind of pain, you just respond to it with love," he said.

The second-generation plumber has faced plenty of punches. He's currently battling prostate cancer for the second time, managing the disease through ongoing treatment. Despite health challenges, he shows up every Sunday with volunteers to serve his community.

Torres and his wife Susan built their family through adoption, welcoming five children who needed homes. Their first daughter Jessica came through a private agency, but word spread about their parenting. The county soon knocked on their door asking if they'd take a four-day-old baby boy.

"They wanted to give us first right of refusal," Torres recalled. "We saw the baby the next day and said yes!" Three more children followed, including a son born to a drug-addicted mother who is now thriving.

The Sunday Service reflects values Torres learned from an unlikely source. Raised Catholic, he drifted from organized religion but kept the core message. "Love thy neighbor as thyself," he tells his kids. "It's impossible to love God, who you cannot see, and hate your neighbor, who you can see."

That philosophy shaped his decades in public service too. Torres served on city councils in both Perris and Indio, fighting for school funding and transparent development. He brought the same fierce advocacy to adoption, to his plumbing business, and now to feeding strangers.

Sunny's Take

What makes Torres's story shine isn't just the meals he serves. It's how he transforms every hardship into an opportunity to love harder. Cancer, political battles, personal loss—each challenge becomes fuel for service instead of bitterness. His Sunday Service proves that grief doesn't have to break us. Sometimes the best way to heal our own hearts is to feed someone else's hunger.

The tables at Miles Avenue Park will keep welcoming guests as long as Torres can set them up, turning a simple meal into something sacred.