San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Former executives wind up in a food line
Friends Debra and Teresa never expected they’d be in line at a food bank. But on a recent Friday morning in Petaluma, that’s exactly where they were.
“Both of us used to be executives, and now we’re standing in a food line,” Debra said.
“I was always a volunteer when I lived in San Francisco,” Teresa said. “It’s very unusual being on the other side.”
The women, who asked that their last names be withheld as they search for work, each had successful careers until relatively recently: Debra worked in insurance, and Teresa was a tech executive. But the effects of the pandemic, a tumultuous economy and a few bad breaks pulled the rug out from underneath them.
David Goodman, chief executive officer of the Redwood Empire Food Bank, which runs the food distribution site the women visited, said many of the 124,000 individuals the nonprofit serves each year were in the same boat — people who never thought they’d need to visit a food bank, but for one reason or another, ended up in a situation where they needed help to get to the next day, week or month.
“Disasters happen every day, and it doesn’t take much,” he said. “And when the unexpected happens, something has to give.”
For Debra, the pandemic is what started her and her husband’s problems. She lost her job, and the couple spent their entire retirement savings trying to keep her husband’s construction company afloat. Then her husband got in a motorcycle accident, deepening their financial troubles. Now the bills won’t stop piling up.
In the space of a few months, she went from making deliveries to homeless people from the food bank to going there for her own groceries.
“I’ve done everything, I can’t get a job,” she said, trying to hold back tears. “I just can’t catch a break.”
Debra said she was grateful for the support from Redwood Empire as she juggles running a day care out of her home, taking on freelance home decorating work, and even occasionally cleaning homes with her former housekeeper to make ends meet.
“I’m so grateful,” she said as she surveyed the produce she picked up. “I’ll make baked apples,
I’ll make a peach tart, I’ll use the onions for weeks from now. So it helps.”
Redwood Empire is one of several food banks across the Bay Area that benefit from the Chronicle Season of Sharing Fund, which provides direct assistance to Bay Area residents experiencing crises and donates 15% of its total funds to food banks. Through the money raised in 2022-23, the fund distributed $2,273,000 to Bay Area food banks — the equivalent of 4,773,300 meals.
Goodman said the food bank does everything it can to make each dollar received from Season of Sharing and other donations last.
That kind of efficiency is even more important as the need for assistance — accelerated by the pandemic — only continues to grow, he said. Besides food, Redwood Empire has expanded its offerings to include other essentials such as diapers that are becoming more unaffordable for consumers.
“I’ve always said that food banks are just going to become more and more important,” Goodman said. “Life is very challenging and is getting more and more expensive for people. We are now just becoming part of the fabric of what it takes to make it, not for poor people, but for anybody who just needs assistance in making it in life.”
For Teresa, who said she was visiting the food distribution site for the first time, that’s exactly what she needed. Her husband, she said, had a very difficult time mentally with the isolation that came with pandemic. Then, last year he had a complete breakdown, she said, and “just up and left” — leaving her and their two kids, 2 and 5 at the time, completely alone.
She took family leave from her tech company to adjust to her new circumstances, she said, but then was laid off the day she came back to work in April. Since then she’s
been volunteering at a child care facility in exchange for discounts, juggling freelance work and searching for a new job — so far unsuccessfully, with many companies telling her she’s too qualified for the roles they have open.
“I have a master’s degree,” Teresa said. “This is insane. … I can’t believe I can’t find work.”
She said she felt guilty taking from a food bank while she owns a home. But when her electricity was about to be shut off earlier this week, she said, she knew she needed to do something.
“I’m just trying to not lose my house right now,” she said. “I really don’t want the kids to have to go through that. I just want to keep everything as normal for them as possible, since not having their dad was already such a huge adjustment for them.”
The food banks themselves aren’t shielded from economic difficulties. When food prices go up for consumers, they also go up for food banks, Goodman said, forcing institutions with fixed budgets to either feed fewer people or feed them less.
“Both of those are unacceptable,” he said. “For all of the time I have been doing this, the only thing that keeps me up at night is the food — where are we going to get the food, and can we afford it?”
But luckily, he said, the Sonoma County community and the Season of Sharing fund “have been there every step of the way,” helping the nonprofit to continue to meet the ever-growing need for food as efficiently and effectively as possible.
“What we do is simple, but how we do it is extremely complicated,” he said. “Season of Sharing makes easy what is otherwise a very complicated process, and we are entirely grateful for that.”