Guard helping at food banks
Soldiers fill the void as volunteer help plummets
Gov. Gavin Newsom sends
California National Guard to six counties to fill the shoes of volunteers who have nearly disappeared in the coronavirus crisis.
As food banks across the Bay Area rush to help a growing number of needy families affected by the coronavirus outbreak, the California National Guard has stepped in to fill one of the state’s most critical demands as help from volunteers has all but disappeared.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has deployed nearly 500 service members to food banks across six counties — Amador, Monterey, Riverside, Sacramento, Santa Cruz and Santa Clara — and service members arrived Monday at Second Harvest of Silicon Valley in San Jose, said Lt. Col. Jonathan Shiroma, spokesman for the California National Guard.
“The volunteers that have had to adhere to the stayathome order are gone,” he said. “So, our soldiers are now replacing them for the time being and offering any type of help that the food banks need.”
The statewide shelterinplace order was a bold move aimed at curbing the spread of the virus, which has claimed 17,400 lives worldwide.
But it has also devastated hundreds of thousands of workers — from servers and janitors to smallbusiness owners, all of whom relied on a steady income to stay afloat in one of the most expensive regions in the country.
“Food banks provide a critical lifeline for families and are needed now more than ever,” Newsom said in a statement Monday. “Families across our state are suddenly losing work, and millions of Californians most vulnerable to COVID19 are staying home to protect their health and the health of others.”
The soldiers’ focus is specifically on the food bank and they will help out for as long as they are needed, Shiroma said.
“The soldiers are there at the request of the food bank to help sort food, to palletize food, to get it all organized with the eventual intent of getting it distributed to the field,” he said.
Not every food bank within the six counties has been willing to accept this help, though, as some declined the Guard’s offer due to concerns about perceptions from the immigrant community, said Jessica Bartholow, legislative advocate at the Western Center on Law and Poverty.
“They come in uniform,” she said. “It can be startling if you come from a country where a uniform represents martial law.”
Social media inflamed the issue, as some users shared erroneous reports of service members coming to California as a heavyhanded way of enforcing shelterinplace orders — a rumor that Newsom refuted.
Founded in 1974, Second Harvest provides food to more than a quartermillion residents in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, according to the nonprofit. More than half of its clients are children and seniors.
The bank distributes healthful food through a network of 310 nonprofits, including churches, community centers and schools. It distributes up to 8,000 boxes of food per day, though the organization is looking to increase that number, CEO Leslie Bacho said.
Since the outbreak, Bacho said, the food bank has seen a “100% increase” in foot traffic at most of its distribution centers, and calls to the bank’s food connection hotline have more than quadrupled.
“Most are folks who haven’t needed food assistance before but have recently lost their jobs,” she said. “At the same time we’re preboxing everything in our warehouse so it can more safely go out to people at distribution sites, to reduce human contact, rather than have clients select what they want at warehouses.”
The food bank is also trying to set up drivethrough distribution to handle increased demand.
Bacho said the National Guard has been working out of the bank’s two locations in San Jose, with 50 Army guardsmen helping at the Cypress Center on North First Street and 29 Air Force guardsmen at the facility on Curtner Avenue.
The Cypress facility has three volunteer shifts a day, and there are normally 50 to 100 volunteers working per shift. But that number has dwindled to 30 volunteers in recent weeks, she said.
“That’s requiring a lot more manpower in our warehouse. We are very dependent on volunteers,” Bacho said. “It’s such a bright spot in an otherwise very challenging time for us. It gives hope to all of us here. It’s great to see this kind of support from that California National Guard, to feel we have this support behind us.”
Ten airmen were deployed to Pacific Grove (Monterey County), where they are assisting the California Emergency Medical Services Authority by treating 19 quarantined passengers from the Grand Princess cruise ship.