Every day around lunchtime, 92-year-old Paul Jackson calls a Braum's near his Oklahoma City home and orders 100 burgers. He loads them into his car and drives to the streets where he has spent more than four years feeding people experiencing homelessness, offering prayer, and handing out Bibles alongside the food.
Jackson's routine has become so familiar that people recognize his vehicle before he even steps out of it, according to News 9. He now makes the rounds seven days a week, a pace he said he adopted because of one man in particular: someone with no legs who was not getting enough to eat. Jackson pays for the burgers largely out of his own pocket, and his family has since started a GoFundMe to help sustain the ministry.
The math behind Jackson's daily giving traces back to a specific menu item. Braum's, the Oklahoma-founded chain headquartered in Tuttle that processes its own milk and beef on a private farm and operates more than 300 locations across five states, sells a Bag of Burgers deal featuring five 1/6-pound hamburgers at a discounted price, according to Braum's. That kind of bulk pricing is what allows one retired man to feed dozens of strangers a day without institutional backing.
A Ministry Born From Loss
Jackson has said his faith has guided him for most of his life, dating back to a decision at age 17 to change the direction of his life. He was married to his wife, Esther, for 68 years before she died four years before the News 9 report was published. Her death, Jackson has said, is what pushed him to expand his street ministry rather than pull back from it.
What he offers people goes beyond the burgers. Jackson has given a hamburger to a man who then knelt down in prayer on the spot, and a woman he served recalled receiving both a Bible and a prayer from him on a street corner. Another person he helped credited the burgers with playing a role in getting him out of that environment altogether.
The work has not been without danger. Jackson has encountered people under the influence of drugs during his rounds, and in one encounter, a person under the influence held a razor close to his head. He continued the ministry anyway. In another instance, Jackson found a man who appeared close to freezing to death and called police, who took the man to Saint Anthony Hospital.
A City Still Facing Widespread Need
Jackson's one-man effort unfolds against a citywide homelessness picture that only recently started improving. Oklahoma City's 2026 Point-in-Time count found 1,867 people experiencing homelessness across the city, a 1% decrease from 1,882 the year before and the city's first overall decline since 2022, according to the City of Oklahoma City. Officials have credited programs like the Key to Home Partnership and Encampment Rehousing Initiative, which have moved roughly 500 unhoused residents into permanent housing since launching in April 2023 and helped drive a 33% drop in chronic unsheltered homelessness between 2024 and 2025, per OKC VeloCity.
But that same 2026 survey found that 55% of people counted as unsheltered were experiencing homelessness for the first time, as Hoodline previously reported. That steady churn of newly unhoused residents is exactly the population that depends on immediate, low-barrier help like the food Jackson hands out from his car window rather than longer-term housing placements.
Regional data adds another layer to who ends up on Oklahoma City's streets. Statewide Point-in-Time figures released in June 2025 showed that 1 in 4 unhoused Oklahomans are age 55 or older, and nearly all of those elderly unhoused residents reported at least one disability, according to the City of Tulsa. Jackson, at 92, is delivering meals to a population that includes people not far from his own age, many of them managing health problems with nowhere stable to live.
Hunger Beyond the Streets
The demand Jackson responds to daily reflects a broader hunger problem across Oklahoma. A U.S. Department of Agriculture survey reported in August 2026 found that nearly 17% of Oklahoma households face food insecurity, placing the state among the most food-insecure in the country. Institutional efforts operate at a much larger scale than Jackson's ministry: the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma, founded in 1980, serves 53 central and western Oklahoma counties through more than 1,300 partner agencies and distributed over 16 million pounds of fresh produce in fiscal year 2025, according to the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma.
Volunteer efforts like Jackson's are also legally protected. Oklahoma enacted House Bill 1542 in April 2023, expanding civil liability immunity for restaurants, school cafeterias, and good Samaritans who donate leftover edible food in good faith to charitable organizations, building on protections established by the federal Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act. The law shields community members who want to feed unhoused neighbors without fear of liability.
Similar community-driven responses have taken shape elsewhere in the metro. Moore Public Schools partnered with the nonprofit Bridges in February 2026 to build a mini village for homeless teens behind an elementary campus, one of several localized efforts emerging alongside citywide housing programs.
None of that changes what Jackson does each day. He has said helping people is his calling, and he plans to continue the ministry for as long as he is physically able. For now, that means another call to Braum's, another 100 burgers, and another round of streets where people already know his car before he opens the door.
