“There are hungry people here, and there’s extra food going to waste. That’s the whole thing.”
Andrea Carla Michaels is on a mission: to save food and usable items from going to waste — and what better way than to give them directly to those most in need?
Known around her Polk Gulch neighborhood as the “Pizza Lady,” Andrea started her journey almost a decade ago with one unused pie. In December 2015, she noticed a worker at her neighborhood pizza shop toss an untouched pizza into the compost bin. Wanting to save it, she asked if she could take it to give out to her hungry neighbors — the have-NOTs (Neighbors on the Street), as she calls them. The shop agreed, and from then on, Andrea picked up and distributed unused pizza every day, earning her nickname.
“It all starts with food,” she says. “If you eat, you can think. And if you can think, you can move forward in your life and try to get the help you need.”
These days, Andrea rescues and distributes bagels, bread, rolls, produce — anything local shops and restaurants will give her before it goes to waste. Sometimes she redistributes shirts, socks, coats, tampons, and other useful discarded items destined for landfill. “These days I’m more like Random Lady,” she laughs.
Behind Andrea’s daily route is a scale that’s hard to ignore. According to ReFED (Rethink Food Waste), 38% of food in the United States goes unsold or uneaten, and most of it ends up in landfills where it produces methane — a potent greenhouse gas. That’s the gap Andrea works inside: intercepting food before it’s tossed and turning it into dinner for her hungry neighbors.
But not every business welcomes her. “Some are wonderful and happy to share extras,” she says. “Others have been hostile. Once, a clerk poured food out in front of me, saying she didn’t want ‘crazy people’ coming in. I cried that day. Another time, a restaurant owner screamed at me just for asking about leftover bread. It’s frustrating, because this food is going to landfill otherwise.”
Still, Andrea persists. Every bag of bagels or bundle of socks she carries ends up in the hands of someone who needs it. On a sunny and warm afternoon, we stop at the corner where a man in a wheelchair has just crossed the street. Andrea greets him with easy familiarity. She offers him a roll — the only food she has to hand out that day — and he accepts with gratitude. Some faces, like his, are constants on her route. But she also meets ten new people nearly every day, she tells me. “The population out here is constantly changing,”
One of those new faces is a man in his early thirties, sitting slumped against the corner of a building, sketching in a notebook. Andrea offers him a roll. He brightens, almost surprised. “I’d love one. This is great, thank you.”
From her bag, she pulls out a few shirts. “I also have some shirts, but they might not be your style,” she says with a grin. He shakes his head at the first two, then she holds up a third. “That’s cool,” he says, and she passes it to him. “Thank you,” he repeats, a little softer this time.
On her route, Andrea has a simple approach; she moves carefully but confidently, giving a warm hello, offering what she has in her bag or wagon, and continuing on her way. “I never want to overwhelm people with too many choices. I hope I come across as gentle,” she tells me. And she does. The reactions are invariably the same: people smile, their eyes brighten, and their shoulders ease a bit. The shift is short but unmistakable.
Still, boundaries are as essential for Andrea as compassion “I don’t linger. It might seem cold, but after all these years, I’ve learned I can’t get drawn into everyone’s story. If I ask how someone is doing, I need to be prepared for the saddest story I’ve ever heard. So I keep conversations short and simple. It’s healthier for them—and for me.”
As for safety, she tells me, I’ve only had four or five incidents, but nothing major. Often the people who look the scariest are the sweetest.”
While she is known for her work as “Pizza Lady,” Andrea is a woman of many layers. A Harvard graduate, she was a stand-up comedian in the 1980s, wrote for television shows including Designing Women and Wordplay, and made memorable appearances on game shows — taking second place on Jeopardy!, winning a motorhome on Wheel of Fortune, competing on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and serving as a chaperone on The Dating Game. She is also a nationally ranked Scrabble champion and workshop instructor.
A published New York Times crossword writer — “They call me Miss Monday,” she says — Andrea also created a Lost and Found website that has reunited countless people with their missing belongings. She founded Acme Naming, building a career naming products for companies. Yet with all her many hats, Andrea shrugs off titles and labels. “I’m just a neighbor,” she says.
