Retired teacher’s project is to fight hunger
Carol McCaskey was working at the concessions stand for the Deer Lakes baseball team when she learned about a North Hills school district program that provided food for economically disadvantaged students to bring home over the weekend.
That was in 2012. By January 2013, Ms. McCaskey had launched a similar program, called Backpack Initiative to Fight Hunger, in the Deer Lakes School District. And by the following fall, she had rolled it out in all four of the district’s schools. This year, 111 students are participating.
That can-do attitude represents Ms. McCaskey’s unshakable spirit of volunteerism. The West Deer resident is one of seven finalists for Most Outstanding Volunteer of the Year Award for the 2014 Jefferson Awards for Public Service program. All 48 local Jefferson Award winners will be honored Monday, where the most outstanding volunteer will be announced. That person will represent Western Pennsylvania at the national Jefferson Awards ceremony in Washington, D.C., this summer.
As part of the program, PG Charities will donate $1,000 to Backpack Initiative to Fight Hunger on Ms. McCaskey’s behalf.
Ms. McCaskey, 70 had two stipulations when she started the program in her community: that any student could join it and that participation remain confidential.
“I want to keep this as quiet as possible so none of the kids are made fun of,” she said. “I want the kids who need it to get it.”
The retired teacher worked in the district for about three decades, and she observed firsthand students teasing their peers who were on free or reduced lunch. She also knew some of those kids wouldn’t have enough to eat over the weekend.
So she remains active in the schools, discreetly distributing plastic bags full of oatmeal, Pop-Tarts, soup or SpaghettiOs at Curtisville Primary Center on Friday morning. At the other schools, staff members are responsible for meting out the food to the students’ lockers so that their classmates can’t see who is receiving the supplies.
Ms. McCaskey advertises the program every August. “People just drop things off,” she said. “I have not had any problems with getting money or food.” Sometimes, she comes home and sees that donors have left food at her home.
She estimates receiving about $6,000 in donated funds this year, in addition to food and other items, such as toys. In the 2013-14 school year, slightly more than a quarter of the roughly 2,000 students in the Deer Lakes district were eligible for free or reduced lunch, compared with about 40 percent in Allegheny County, according to an analysis of data from the Pennsylvania Department of Education.
Similar programs in other districts — such as Blessings in a Backpack — have started or are in the works, Ms. McCaskey said. “I’m hoping it goes all through the area.” She also hopes to expand the program to the summer months.
This super volunteer keeps super busy. She prepares meals for senior citizens three times a week through East Union Presbyterian Church, where she also serves as clerk of session; gives her time to the West Deer Food Bank twice per month; serves on the board of West Deer Parks and Recreation; assists on a Christmastime toys program through the local police department … the list goes on.
“I keep out of trouble,” she joked.
“I don’t know how to explain her, really. She just never stops,” said Donna M. Paszek, a friend and fellow churchgoer who nominated Ms. McCaskey for a Jefferson Award. “She’s always smiling, always nice to everyone.”
Ms. Paszek is a member of the Fort Pitt Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, which won a 2013 Jefferson Award. At the awards ceremony, “All I kept thinking is, Carol should be here,” she said. “That’s why, when I got an opportunity and saw it in the paper, I thought, I have to nominate Carol.”
“A lot of people, it’s not their fault they don’t have food or whatever, especially the kids,” Ms. McCaskey said, “so I don’t want them hurting because of other things in society.”