As Michiganders, we are no strangers to the frigid temperatures that come with living in America’s “Water Winter Wonderland”. We have all had experiences where we, for some reason or another, underdressed and felt the cold a little extra because of it. It is said that clothing is one of the basic necessities for human life, alongside Food, water, shelter and sleep. However there are many people who, during these months, don’t have the adequate amount of layers to combat the freezing conditions.
Out of the 200,000 homeless people in the United States, thousands face complications due to the frigid temperatures during winter and on average, 700 of them freeze to death each year. While the cold isn’t the most substantial contributor to the homeless death toll, those 700 people are a clear indication of how something as simple as a coat can save a life.
Enter our residential Coat Man, Todd Lands, who has collected tens of thousands of coats in his time as a Reinhardt Real Estate Agent. He’s an Ann Arbor local and U-M enthusiast, has a family and children and is enthusiastic about giving back to his community in a number of ways. The Charles Reinhardt Company has collected cleaned and distributed over 35,000 coats total to 31 different social service organizations over its 28 years of doing the coat drive. Out of the 220 participant realtors who work for the Reinhardt agency, Todd has regularly donated the most coats out of anyone at the company! He is BY FAR the most passionate participant of the fundraiser, and has done so consistently for the last 22 years he’s spent working there! Last year in 2022, the 220 realtors working for the Reinhardt agency raised 1800 coats in total. Todd and his assistant Courtney oversaw 24 donation bins, which yielded them 1300 coats… nearly a fourth of all proceeds!
You would expect someone with the last name “Lands” to fit the bill for a job as a realtor… and you would be right in that assessment. Todd is a very successful realtor for the Reinhardt agency, having received the Pillar Award for real estate professional of the year in 2004 and being “crowned” as realtor of the year recently in 2018. He primarily manages the houses in the Ann Arbor Woods area but is known to deal all over Washtenaw county. He is very loyal to his patrons, a super polite guy and an all around pleasant person to be around in my personal experience.
When I reached out to Todd for an interview, he was more than happy to comply and we ended up engaging in fruitful conversation for a few hours. In this time he narrated his philanthropic ventures and experiences, and helped me to define what it means to be an exceptional person in a community.
“I feel fortunate to enjoy helping people, a lot of people don’t have passion like that and it’s sad”
Todd Lands
The Reinhardt Coat Drive drive officially goes on during the month of November,
however it has been unofficially extended to the end of December.
Each year before donation time begins, Todd calls each organization partnered with the drive and asks them how many coats they estimate will be enough. Todd says that “It’s usually a modest number like 40 or 50, and we end up bringing them like 200.
“Their need is so much greater than they know.”
When asked about how all the coats are managed, Todd said “Me and Courtney take them to cleaners and then distribute to 28 different organizations across the county”.
Primarily the Saline area social services… who have received around 5000 coats from Todd alone! Other standout establishments include but are not limited to; The Delonas Center, Ypsilanti Public Schools, and the Hope Crisis Center.
He also mentioned that the hope crisis center, in particular, used to provide; doctor visits and food distribution to those in need. But they haven’t offered these services since the Covid Pandemic Hit. He is annoyed at this decision, almost sounding betrayed by them. Todd thinks that “they should’ve kicked things into overdrive” in response. With so many people suffering from unemployment and eviction during the pandemic, less people offering services and help to the unhoused resulted in so much suffering.
I continued the conversation by asking how he raises so many coats.
“I’ve collected donations at physical therapy clinics, Washtenaw Community College, the saline rec center, and multiple homeless shelters”. He also advertises the coat drive in local newspapers.
In the month of November there is usually a bin outside every house with a Reinhart Realtors sign, so if you see one of those bins and have a coat to spare, maybe consider donating!
During the yearly collection season, he keeps a bin outside of his house too. Over the 22 years of coat collecting, his neighbors have grown accustomed to donating coats and remembering to drop off a coat or 2 just because it’s that time of the year. He also mentioned that every year he gets people who put canned food in the donation bins he sets up… which he goes on to donate on top of the coats.
“I like to highlight funny instances like that” Todd said as a cheeky sidenote
Afterwards, he went into depth on the feeling of joy he gets when handing out coats, and seeing people smile, especially little kids. Detailing that one particular instance of a little kid just saying “This Coat is for me?” when being handed one, put the biggest smile on Todd’s face. He said afterwards that…
“You’ll get one of those experiences every five years and it’ll be enough to energize you”
The Coat drive isn’t the only thing he does for his community. When I asked him what other things there were, he listed a few things…
- “I donate money when I can, I pull over to the side of the road to help people.”
- “I try to be an active do gooder, and do random acts of kindness when presented”
- “I’m a member of the Rotary”
I’d heard the term Rotary used before, based on the name alone I would have thought it was a group of people celebrating antique rotary telephones. But in reality, the Roterians are a worldwide organization dedicated to service, way more interesting than what I assumed they were. Their official description states that their purpose is to “provide service to others, promote integrity, and advance world understanding, goodwill, and peace through the fellowship of business, professional, and community leaders”.
They are a worldwide organization with nearly a million and a half members spanning over 200 countries. He has participated in their global dealings, like their campaign against Polio and antivaxing. Apparently after the disease was nearly eradicated in the 1990s, the majority of medical professionals stopped handing out polio vaccines because it was believed that the disease had died out completely. This ended up backfiring. And while the numbers were nowhere near as big as before the vaccine was developed, the entire second coming of polio could have been completely avoided. Todd is more heavily involved in their local prospects, the most recent of which was helping to supply 170 families with groceries, Christmas presents and books in association with Schooltic this recent holiday season.
He was also a boy scout during his youth and continues to be a supporter of the organization.
“It all started when I was a boy scout, that’s when I knew I liked helping people and doing things… I still feel like I’m a boy scout”.
Todd Lands
Todd likes to label some of the things he does as “boy scout things”, like picking up litter, helping an old lady cross the street and even not saying cuss words.
As a side note, I was a boy scout too… and whenever I see Todd in person he always makes sure to shake my left hand because that’s just a boy scout custom. I always saw it as a really cool sentiment… It makes me feel like a boy scout again too.
One of the things he did for the Boy Scouts is, in response to a lack of adult engagement and shortage of scout masters, he donated a bunch of pocket mirrors that when opened, displayed handwritten text (by Todd) that read as…
“Wanted”
“This person listed has been known to do random acts of kindness”
These mirrors were handed to parents of scouts during some kind of get together promoting involvement. And believe it or not, the mirrors were a massive success and caused tons of parents to get involved in the program! I think his involvement and enjoyment of being a part of the Rotary definitely stems from and is strengthened by his time as a boy scout.
“Hanging out with the rotary helps me be an exceptional person”
Todd Lands
He actually comes from a long line of Rotarians, the most significant of which was his grandpa, whom he holds in very high esteem. He describes the man as…
“He was also a realtor, didn’t cuss, smoke or chase women… super duper bible thumpin guy.”
Coincidentally, his grandfather was honored with the award of Realtor of the year in 1977, the same title Todd would be awarded in 2018. Todd went on and on, singing his grandpa’s praises and making himself seem small in comparison by saying… “If i could be one tenth of what he was, that’d be great”.
When faced with a difficult decision or trial, he often thinks to himself “What would Grandpa do?” He didn’t really elaborate on his grandfather’s greatest deeds but the respect he feels towards the man is enough to convince me that he was pretty remarkable.
After that he went on a tangent about how the Rotarians did not allow women into their ranks until 1987… and how crazy it was that women being let into groups is such a recent thing. Now the president of the rotary club is a woman, Jenifer Jones, and Todd has had the pleasure of meeting with her.
The tangent spiraled more into other significant people he knows or has heard of… like the prior citizen of the year in 2004 who happens to be his boss. And someone who won the good neighbor award for donating his time to Hope Crisis Center cooking meals for the people there. Both of which definitely fit the definition of an “exceptional citizen” based on pure merit and recognition for that merit. Thinking about these remarkable people makes him discouraged with how much he does.
I actually first reached out to Todd because he is a friend of my family and has known me since I was little, having lived in the same neighborhood as my dad, and went on to work as a salesman at Varsity Ford dealership… where my dad also worked. I thought that since he was a well established realtor he would have connections with some pretty important people and point me in the right direction. He gave me some big names who’s dealings seemed a little larger than life, but when he started to detail his own philanthropic acts, It got me thinking about the meaning of the word “exceptional” and how broad that word can be.
So I asked Todd, “what does it mean to be exceptional in your community”. And he said…
“It’s a matter of definition to the beholder, someone who doesn’t sit back and do nothing or someone who gets involved and gets to do things.”
The suffix “al” is a suffix with multiple meanings and uses, in the case of the word “exceptional” its being used in the sense of “having the form or character of”. Exceptional, grammatically speaking, means to be a character of someone who doesn’t act in accordance with a general trend. The general trend in this case, when discussing humans as a whole, is disregarding issues and others and acting as a complete and total bystander through life.
So many people have preached the fact that there isn’t enough kindness in the world in many different ways. Philosophers have debated human nature as inherently selfish for hundreds of years, and that it is a basic part of the “human condition” to act in your own interest as opposed to acting generously to our fellow human beings. The origins of this are believed to stem from our most primitive ancestral roots, before society even existed. Mutualism in nature is when 2 different species have a relationship that results in an increased fitness for them both (ex: a hummingbird pollinating a flower in exchange for nectar), however neither of these organisms have the wellbeing of the other and are both in that relationship for their own personal gain. Humans evolved to be able to show empathy for others, and our capacity for empathy is one of the many traits that separates us from animals.
I believe that going against this standard is what it means to be an exceptional member of a community, to live outside the normal human condition of selfishness and doing kind acts for those around you just because. Showing generosity for the sake of showing generosity and nothing more is what I believe separates the exceptional from the conventional.
Something neat thing about human empathy is that doing an act of kindness has been shown to release serotonin and oxytocin (feel good hormones) in the human brain. And receiving these acts of kindness can also release these hormones. So the spread of kindness can be scientifically explained as mutualistic and beneficial to both parties because of this phenomenon. Pretty cool right! If you don’t believe me, give it a try and see how you feel.
Everyone has the potential to be exceptional in their community. Everyone has exceptional qualities and attributes that set them apart from others, we’re all exceptions to different static rules because we’re all different free thinking, non-uniform human beings. You are exceptional, but you should always strive to be a better you. That better you can come into existence in a lot of different ways. Doing generous acts of kindness for people, big or small, has never been shown to make someone a worse person. So if you are looking for ways to better yourself, consider finding a way to give to those in need and helping your community. You could get involved with a service group, buy a groundcover issue to support the vendors,
Or maybe you could just donate a coat.
