In region of plenty, many still in need of assistance
Volunteers flock to S.F. food bank on Thanksgiving
Graduate student Josephine Shatara spent part of her Thanksgiving with her aunt and cousin, sorting through donated cartons of pasta and wrapping them in 1-pound bags at the SF-Marin Food Bank, to be distributed to food pantries and programs that serve the needy. It’s the best way she knows to give thanks.
“It’s not like giving money. You see the bag of pasta, the final product,” said Shatara, 32, a doctoral candidate in education at New York’s Columbia University whose family lives in Burlingame. “If you’re about to eat a big dinner, it’s nice to know that other people are going to get food today.”
As Sharon Kann, 32, of San Mateo separated cans of soup and vegetables in crates at the organization’s San Francisco warehouse, she recalled what it was like living “hand to mouth” as a college student. She now works as a mechanical engineer and has been a Thanksgiving volunteer at the warehouse for the past five years.
“The way the economy is going, a lot of low-income families are struggling,” Kann said. “It’s a good idea to help.”
They were among several hundred volunteers who spent their holiday morning and early afternoon sifting through truckloads of food donated by individuals and businesses and getting them ready for delivery to those who need them.
The volunteers, and a staff of 70, comb through as much as 80,000 pounds of produce in a day, tossing out spoiled apples and oranges and pack-
ing the rest into bins bound for soup kitchens and other facilities, said Mark Seelig, a spokesman for the food bank. Others separated huge boxes of pasta and rice into individual bags and waded through canned food donated at markets.
The warehouse draws volunteers every day — “Hunger is a 365-day-ayear problem,” Seelig noted — but people sign up months in advance to work on Thanksgiving. Volunteers increased from about 30,000 last year to 40,000 this year, an increase that Seelig said was at least partly a reaction to President Trump and his policies.
“We don’t like to be political. We serve everybody,” he said. “But when Trump came into power, people were calling us and wanted to do something.”
One was Oakland’s Clinton Karr, 37, who showed up in a turkeyshaped cap with a halfdozen members of a group they called the Great Give-Back.
The election “was a wake-up call,” Karr said. He said his 150-member group has been active in other food drives, blood donations, a cleanup of Lake Merritt and some political causes, and plans to march through San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood Dec. 9 in Santa costumes, handing out bags of socks, ponchos and toiletries.
One thankful consumer is Tenderloin resident Susan Vela. Blinded by diabetes since 2000, she survives on Social Security disability payments, a small stipend from her volunteer work at San Francisco General Hospital, and twice-weekly grocery packages from the nonprofit City of Hope — “milk … potatoes, carrots, squash, whatever’s in season,” to be cooked by her social service provider. On Thursday, she shared in the annual Thanksgiving turkey feast at nearby Glide Memorial Church, one of several institutions offering meals for the needy.
“I’m one of the lucky recipients,” said Vela, 58, who worked in customer service before her affliction. “I can’t rave enough about the volunteers,” she said, reciting their names – Andy, Mark, Fox, Becky. “The City of Hope changed my life.”
Even in relatively prosperous San Francisco and Marin County, 1 in 4 people need food assistance, according to data provided by the food bank, which reports providing nourishment to 225,000 people a year — in all, 48 million pounds of food, 60 percent of it fresh fruits and vegetables. It supplies food to more than 400 nonprofits and runs 260 weekly farmers’ marketstyle food pantries in the two counties.
One volunteer who had a personal reason for showing up this year was 27-year-old Liz Drummond of Daly City, who manages a storage facility with her husband. She said her great-aunt in Santa Rosa lost her home and practically everything she owned in last month’s wildfires.
“A lot of this is going up” to fire victims, said Drummond, sifting through cans of food as her husband worked in another part of the warehouse. “It’s not difficult work. And the more hands, the faster it’ll go to get this to people who need it.”