Salazar, Jennylyn D.

ABMC-4
Feature Article Entry No.6 TTh 5:30-7:00 PM
Type of Feature: Human Interest Story

DAN, THE COFFEE ANGEL

Every Thursday morning, Starbucks at Square Lake and Woodward in Michigan
expects a visitor. A cherry enthusiastic man dressed in his 'year-round uniform' of
sweatshirts and shorts enters the shop and takes out a long list of orders ranging from the
12-24 choices of beverages. The employees, at first, simply thought the man's running an
errand for his neighbors and the customers always get the idea that Dan is a Starbucks
delivery boy. Yet, the people at Michigan Cancer Center perfectly know what Dan has
always been up to. They don't call him the 'coffee angel' for no reason.
In a place where life comes and goes, Henry Dandison Dewey, nicknamed "Dan,
is an angel with his silky bright white hair and mustache in absolute contrast to his
tanned-skin. As he smiles, his hair whips back and forth with it. Then again, it has never
been the looks that made the people there treat him a man from heaven. It was his deeds
and eternal gratitude that garnered their admiration for Dan. You see, the beverages he
buys from Starbucks are for the doctors, nurses, staff, and cancer patients. He delivers
them by himself every Thursday morning since 2006. In the waiting room where a pack
of around 100 patients expect treatment each day, Dan is greeted with a wave and a "hi".
As he passes the corridor, he calls the man with a cane in a wheelchair, "You staying?"
The man happily responds, "Hot chocolate." This is Dan's usual conversation with the
patients. Everybody knows him at Michigan Cancer Center.
Dan Dewey, not in a very stable age of 67-years old, never had the killing
disease known as cancer nor experienced any form of chemotherapy infusion but he
spends two days a week at the Center to deliver coffee for the people. It makes him happy
to put smiles on their faces, let them hope for the brighter side of things in a possibly
depressing condition, and show some appreciation. Surely, one cannot help but wonder
how Dan started this cause willing to spend bucks for other people's happiness. It was all
rooted to his father.
In 2005, when the family thought that everything was going to be well from then
on after Dan's father had just recovered from Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2002, he was
diagnosed with prostate cancer. He then started chemotherapy sessions at Pontiac's St.
Joseph' Mercy Hospital in 2006.
"He gets in the big blue chair and I go, 'I'm going for a coffee,' Dewey shares as
he recalls his childhood memories of taking care for his father. "I'll never forget, I stood
up, and here's all these other people hooked to needles. So I go,' Anybody want anything
else? I'm going for coffee. I've got his (father's) wallet," tells Dewey. Since then, he
became the "goofball willing to buy a total stranger a coffee."
His father's cancer treatment reached two 8-week chemo sessions before cancer
finally surrendered in his body. The cancer was beaten and all was well but Dan
continued his cause. It has been eight years since then.
Starbucks barista Valerie Edgington showed great admiration for Dan's cause in
2011 and decided to be a dedicated supporter of his epic coffee run. "I learned quickly
what he was buying at the coffee for. He didn't have a lot of money but what he did of
buying drinks for the patients was 'wow'," says Edgington. Consequently, Edgington
started a custom Starbucks card named "Dan's Coffee Run" that is now supported by over
13,000 users on Facebook.
A cup of coffee can energize the spirit but with "Dan's Coffee Run", it might as
well heal the soul.