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Down to the last can: Arizona food bank heroes persevere in time of novel coronavirus

Stories of worry, despair are uplifted through local Godsends

Posted 4/21/20

Arizonans are in need, and local nonprofit organizations are trying to meet the call for food as thousands of people seek ways to feed their families.

Whether out of work with a sudden loss of …

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Down to the last can: Arizona food bank heroes persevere in time of novel coronavirus

Stories of worry, despair are uplifted through local Godsends

Posted

Arizonans are in need, and local nonprofit organizations are trying to meet the call for food as thousands of people seek ways to feed their families.

Whether out of work with a sudden loss of income, the local grocery store’s shelves are bare or an at-risk person is afraid to venture out because of the threat of COVID-19 --- people are struggling.

St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization serving eight Arizona counties, has experienced a dramatic increase in the clients needing food boxes. In one Arizona city, a 5-mile-long line of vehicles greeted three semi-trucks delivering 90,000 pounds of food from St. Mary’s.

While stepping up to fill the need, St. Mary’s also faces the underlying threat of eventually running out of goods to provide to those who need them as Arizona food drives --- which provide millions of pounds of food --- have been postponed or canceled.

St. Mary’s Food Bank isn’t an anomaly in today’s world as community resources around the Valley are being inundated with calls for help. Mesa-based United Food Bank is also seeing an influx of people needing food, and many clients are picking up items for others in-need.

In addition to her own family, Jessica Coles picked up food for her sister and her brother-in-law who have lost work due to the pandemic.

She’s been able to make chicken enchiladas, tacos and spaghetti and vegetables for her son with the food from United Food Bank.

“With everything going on it’s been hard to get groceries at the store,” said Ms. Coles.

“It makes a huge difference between telling my son we’re having Top Ramen for dinner versus a healthy meal.”

United Food Bank reports that in March, they served more than 2,300 households --- almost 10,000 individuals --- in one week, which is more than four times the average.

Phoenix-based Area Agency on Aging President and CEO Mary Lynn Kasunic says the senior-focused nonprofit organization received more than 16,000 calls in a four-week period. Most of the calls were for food.

“That’s about, considering what we normally get, it’s over 5,000 more calls in the last four or five weeks than we would normally receive,” Ms. Kasunic said.

At the request of Gov. Doug Ducey, the Crisis Response Network activated a hotline on March 22 to provide information and resources to those in need. The bilingual hotline is accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week by dialing 2-1-1.

The hotline connects people throughout the state with local services, and for those living in Maricopa County, it connects individuals and families with organizations participating in the county’s Community Organizations Active in Disaster group.

As of April 20, the hotline has received more than 25,000 calls.

“It’s natural for people to feel unsure and anxious in times like this,” said Justin Chase, president and CEO of Crisis Response Network. “We recommend people take breaks from social media and news because hearing repeated messages about the pandemic can take a toll. Reach out to the crisis hotline if you need help.”

A tough pill to swallow

Father of three, Carl Ong, is suddenly without work --- and hemorrhaging money --- as the travel agency he owns has closed its doors and is also having to refund money.

For the first time in his life, he visited the food bank. Mr. Ong says while he picked up food for his family and a couple of neighbors whom he knew were in need, he felt guilty about taking from others who might need it more.

After hearing about the food bank’s services, Mr. Ong contacted a couple other families who he knew were in need to see if they wanted to split a food box. He says the decision as spur-of-the-moment.

“I have three kids and a wife, but we’re doing OK. It was more of the necessity for the other people I knew were probably struggling a little more than me,” he explained.

“This is unforeseen, and kind of uncharted territory. I think we do things that instinctively, we want to help people.”

The food box he received came with meats, produce, bread, peanut butter and other various pantry items.

Mr. Ong says when COVID-19 took hold of Maricopa County, the world stopped. He described his business, which he’s owned for 20 years, is in shambles.

“Life stopped, the world stopped. For everyone to get acclimated to a new lifestyle of sheltering down, staying home, and not being able to provide. And, then when you go the grocery stores and nothing is left, it’s a different mindset. Even if people can afford to go get food, there’s nothing to get. So having that opportunity to go get items that --- whether or not I might not have needed --- the circle of people working together amongst my friends and family, we can get things for each other. When this opportunity came about, it was a Godsend. We knew if we couldn’t get eggs somewhere, there would be eggs in this box.”

-Carl Ong

Mr. Ong says utilizing the services of the food bank was a double-edged sword as he continued to think about other people who may need the food more.

“I was making a good living, I would have never imagined having to do that. There’s guilt involved too when you do that because I know there’s hundreds of thousands of other people less fortunate than myself,” Mr. Ong said.

“I even told the guy distributing food, because I was one of the last cars to get through, I said ‘if there’s nothing left it’s OK. And if there’s families with small children, just give it to them.’ So there is a guilt factor to do this. And it’s hard to go through that line because I know there’s probably so many people who are more deserving and need it more than me. That was the hard part of going through that and doing that.”

A good neighbor

The Area Agency on Aging has utilized St. Mary’s Food Bank to get boxes to give to senior citizens. Ms. Kasunic says they’ve distributed about 1,300 food boxes.

“We also have been buying loaves of bread, dozens of eggs, we had Depends and some pet food,” Ms. Kasunic said, noting they have responded to over 2,200 people since the outbreak began.

“For some people, what we try to do is try to get them on Meals on Wheels coming out of senior centers. It’s another 500 or 600 people we’ve gotten on Meals on Wheels, so they get a noontime meal seven days a week.”

Ms. Kasunic said she’s hearing from seniors that they’re afraid to go to the store, and when they do go, the shelves are empty or there are long lines.

“We keep responding to the need for the food boxes,” Ms. Kasunic said. “From St. Mary’s they get one food box per month so what we’re trying to do is take them out a food box and then convert them to Meals on Wheels so they have a steady meal every day.”

The Area Agency on Aging staff and community has also donated food for their clients, and they are able to make microwavable bags of food for senior citizens who are not in a position to cook the food box items.

“I think the community has really stepped up,” she said. “My big message to people is to look around their neighborhood and see who the elderly are. Go knock on their door and see if they need anything, like milk or bread. Be a good neighbor.”

Giving food out until the last can

St. Mary’s Food Bank not only distributes food from two Valley locations --- one in Phoenix and one in Surprise --- but it also delivers food to 700 other distribution agencies.

At one Phoenix location, families seeking food jumped from 600 to 1,200, St. Mary’s Director of Media Relations Jerry Brown explained.

“We’ve been between 1,000 and 1,500 ever since,” Mr. Brown said.
“I would say it started in earnest around St. Patrick’s Day. In the interim, a lot of those agencies --- about 25% --- we deal with have had to either totally stop giving food out or are on a real limited basis because they don’t have the volunteer capability.”

Mr. Brown said many of these agencies, as well as the food bank, run on volunteers. With stay-at-home orders in place, the volunteer work has ceased in many cases.

“Twenty-five percent of those food banks closed, so we have had to institute mobile pantries, which is where we take a tractor truck trailer full of food and go to where people use to go to get food,” Mr. Brown said. “And distribute food --- 20, 30, 40, 50,000 pounds. Up in Tuba City at the Navajo Nation last weekend it was 90,000 pounds of food to folks in those areas who no longer have that place to go where they normally would go to get food. So we’re filling in those gaps.”

Mr. Brown said these remote distributions to fill in gaps is in addition to the Valley locations also doubling in clients.

“One day last Tuesday we had 3,700 families at four locations around the Valley. That’s an incredible amount --- if you put that to five people per family, that’s 20,000 people fed in one day,” Mr. Brown said. “That would be great, if that were one day. But the problem is, the line is there again the next day.”

St. Mary’s Food Bank hours of operation begin at 8:30 a.m. At about 9:30 a.m. on a Monday, Mr. Brown points out he could see a line three-quarters of a mile long.

The food boxes provided to clients come with about a week’s worth, or more, of groceries.

Their food is received from myriad sources, including the federal government, purchasing and donations. However, Mr. Brown says this source is dwindling.

“The grocery store food, which makes up about 15-20% of all food we get, is grocery rescue food. That disappeared,” he said. “Because grocery stores are having a hard time keeping food on their shelves they’re not having things on the shelves reach the end of their life that they can give to food banks. It’s not getting there, it’s not reaching that point.”

In addition, food drives have been postponed or canceled.

“All of that food, which is millions of pounds of food that we get from corporate food drives, from public events, sport events, concerts, all those things. That’s all been wiped out as well,” he said.

One positive, he says, is that food normally sold to restaurants is now getting donated to food banks.

About half of St. Mary’s food and donations comes in during the months of November and December, when people are feeling charitable.

“What we do is we stretch that food out over the whole year, so we were actually stocked up at the time this hit --- but that food is supposed to last all year --- the rate it’s going out the door it’s certainly not going to,” he said.

“We can’t ration food. There are people out there who need it, we have food, we will give people food until we go down to the last can. We just have to hope that the need for food slows down before the amount of food we have starts to run out.”

For people who want to help, Mr. Brown encourages people to sign up for a volunteer shift or stay home and make a donation online.

Every $1 provides seven meals to the community.

Go to firstfoodbank.org.