It's a big day for the ladies of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority's Tau Omega Chapter: their annual Martin Luther King Day of Service.

Volunteers are packing one thousand bags of toiletries and essentials for people in shelters throughout Manhattan.

There to support, as she has for decades, is Adina Johnson.

"Letting know that we think about them, that we care about them," she said.

Johnson is one of the Tau Omega chapter's pearls, which means she has been part of the group for more than 65 years.

She pledged the sorority back in the early 1950s as an undergraduate student at CUNY's Hunter College.

"I had no sisters and brothers, and they became my sisters,” Johnson said. “I mean, we really bonded."

Alpha Kappa Alpha is a part of the National Pan-Hellenic Council. Better known as the "Divine Nine." Black college students started the Greek fraternal organizations when racial tensions were high and morale needed a boost. 

"We were not involved or couldn't be involved in the white sororities. So we made our own," she said.

Johnson had kept with the sisterhood ever since. She has spent the last 65 years volunteering with AKA at senior centers, chronicling her sorority’s history and more.

"She is the epitome of what sisterhood means,” Valerie Henderson, the president of Alpha Kappa Alpha’s Tau Omega chapter, said. “And every time we get a hug from her, it just feels like, like heaven. It's love."

That includes helping out at this Martin Luther King Day of Service.

To mark Tau Omega's centennial year, the sorority invited the other local Divine Nine chapters to participate.

"It's like there's a closeness that I feel," Johnson said.

And it’s a chance to build community decades after finding it in school.

"It’s such a wonderful thing to be amongst people who truly love you and who truly interact with you and, and care about you," she said.

For being a pearl to her sisters and her community, Adina Johnson is our New Yorker of the Week.