AJ Owen<\/a> is flying out for the Super Bowl Saturday morning with his brother. KDKA-TV introduced Owen in November, when he started a food pantry on his lawn, after many people on SNAP benefits lost their benefits during the government shutdown.<\/p>\nYahya Black, a defensive lineman from the Steelers, showed up at Owen’s pantry with hundreds of dollars in food. That encounter sparked a friendship, and even some tickets to a prior game.<\/p>\n
“He’s presented myself with Pittsburgh Steelers tickets at the Steelers game versus the Ravens, which we won, obviously,” Owen said.<\/p>\n
Then came January, when Black surprised Owen with tickets for the work he did providing food for people who needed it.<\/p>\n
“Never would I have in a million years guessed that it was going to be Super Bowl tickets,” Owen said. “Even here, a month later, after those were presented to us, still at a loss for words.”<\/p>\n
On Sunday, it’s going to be real. Owen and his brother will be sitting in Santa Clara, California, at Levi’s Stadium. Owen did not tell KDKA-TV who he was rooting for, by the way.<\/p>\n
Owen says he has not packed his things yet. But there is still a lot of packing to do at the pantry he set up. It has grown immensely in the past three months.<\/p>\n
“We’ve gone from a tote and a couple of hand coolers to a legitimate tent shelter with 10-plus totes and an overflow table,” Owen said.<\/p>\n
It’s helped those in need, which was the only thing he had set out to do.<\/p>\n
“This is something that just started being a good person,” Owen said.<\/p>\n
\n More from CBS News\n <\/p>\n
In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pittsburgh Steelers are not going to the Super Bowl this year, but one man from Whitehall is.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":735320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2055],"tags":[35631,78734,7,6,520,57,2360,426,505],"class_list":["post-735319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh-steelers","tag-food-banks","tag-food-stamps","tag-football","tag-nfl","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-steelers","tag-pittsburghsteelers","tag-steelers","tag-super-bowl"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116028546357089708","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=735319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/735320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=735319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=735319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=735319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}