ALAMOSA — It started with one.

Now Juan Contreras is providing Thanksgiving dinners for 40 families with the help of coworkers, friends, family and generous local residents and business owners.

“I just wanted to give back to the community,” Contreras said, “and I wanted to sponsor one family, from our family to them just as a personal thing.”

Somehow his generous intentions spread to 10 families and then 25, “and our last count was 40,” Contreras said on Sunday as volunteers prepared to put together the Thanksgiving meal boxes that will be delivered by Alamosa County Department of Human Services (DHS) staff to local families in need.

“We got a lot of community support,” Contreras said, “from different businesses and people working in those businesses.”

Contreras’ coworkers at Chili’s donated to the dinners, for example, and Chili’s donated 12 of the turkeys. SLV Federal gave a donation, as did City Market, Treasure Alley, Country Kitchen, DHS staff and others. Hampton Inn donated a meeting room for the group to put the Thanksgiving boxes together on Sunday.

One donor was glad to help with Contreras’ goal because he remembered hard times in his own life when he didn’t have a Thanksgiving meal.

Through one man’s wish to provide a turkey dinner for one family for Thanksgiving a community came together to provide enough for 40 families to celebrate with a special meal this week.

Caption: Ready to put together Thanksgiving meal baskets are from left in front Amira, Joshua and Andrew and from left in back Kathy, Denessa, Anna, Juan, Zenobia and Fred.