Jeff Brondel is a familiar face to the students and staff at St. Martin Catholic School.

The longtime volunteer spent his mornings greeting them on arrival and has been part of the Jaguar Club for several years trying to give positive encouragement to students so they can start their day off right.

Brondel received the Fisher Family’s Good Samaritan Award on Saturday. Redemption Inside the Walls and News Tribune have teamed up for the second year to select five “Good Samaritans” who have done everything they can to help the Mid-Missouri region.

Brondel said there are about five or six volunteers in the school every morning ready to greet the children and their families and help them get out of the cars and prepare for the school day. And that in any weather.

“There’s not a day we’re not out there,” said Brondel.

His work with the school in St. Martins enabled Brondel to get to know the children in the area and their families. He said he was working on learning the names of the new students and noticed that he already knew 95 percent.

And being at the school itself feels easy as he grew up right next door.

“It was like a home from home,” said Brondel.

However, Brondel was a volunteer long before the Jaguar Club was founded about eight years ago. Always ready to help out with the St. Martins Knights of Columbus and Special Olympics Missouri, he found that he once served in the Knights of Columbus clown club.

“I love children,” said Brondel. “Just the reward of seeing a young child’s face light up.”

Unfortunately, for health reasons, Brondel had to stop fooling around. Two decades ago, he was hospitalized for 138 days after being paralyzed by a virus. A few years later, when the nerves in recovery grew back and caused excruciating pain, Brondel said he had found solace in helping the children at St. Martins, indicating which his real daughter is.)

And a year ago he was diagnosed with stage 4 liver cancer. The school children put together a prayer chain with almost 200 individual prayers.

“I sat there in my chair and read it, only tears ran down my face,” said Brondel.

Brondel said he always tried to live by the simple rule of treating others the way one would like to be treated. Here’s how he was described in his nomination for the award: “He is passionate about his mission to be a positive mentor to all children who come to school to study. He lives by the motto: When you die, it doesn’t matter what material things you had, it’s what you did for a child. “

When it came to the nomination, Brondel said he was surprised and deeply touched to learn that it was from his daughter he had quarreled with earlier on the day he learned of the nomination.

“It was a surprise, a big surprise,” said Brondel, adding that there are so many people in mid-Missouri who deserve the award.

The other four winners of the Fisher Family Good Samaritan Award are: Alicia Edwards, Connie Cashion, Chris Jarboe, and Bill Graham.