Grocery giveaway assists Valley families

Drive-through operation held by county, city, school District

QUARTZ HILL — More than 1,600 Antelope Valley families each picked up 80 to 100 pounds of groceries Tuesday in a free drivethrough food distribution event hosted by Los Angeles County, the City of Lancaster and Westside Union School District.

Cars begin lining up more than two hours before the 9 a.m. start of the event at Joe Walker Middle School. The line of cars stretched for more than a mile down Avenue L-8 and 60th Street West.

More than 80 Los Angeles County employees and volunteers including Community Emergency Response Training members staffed the four-and-a-half-hour event. They placed cardboard boxes containing cheese, potatoes, apples, cooked chicken, rice and other food in car trunks as the lines of cars snaked through a school parking lot.

The groceries were provided by the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank. The distribution events were hosted by Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Chair Kathryn

Barger, Westside Union School District, the City of Lancaster, the Los Angeles County Library and the Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation.

Most of the people who lined up came from Quartz Hill and Lancaster, but others came from as far as Rosamond and Neenach.

This was Los Angeles County’s third grocery distribution in the Antelope Valley in partnership with the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank since the start of the COVID 19 pandemic. Grocery distribution events were held in May in Littlerock and Lake Los Angeles.

PHOTO COURTESY OF OFFICE OF SUPERVISOR KATHRYN BARGER More than 1,600 Antelope Valley families each picked up 80 to 100 pounds of groceries Tuesday. Cars begin lining up more than two hours before the 9 a.m. start of the event at Joe Walker Middle School. The line of cars stretched for more than a mile down Avenue L-8 and 60th Street West.