Teens organize services to assist most vulnerable during pandemic

Volunteers embrace reward of helping those truly in need.

LOS ANGELES — Christine Riel, wearing a face mask and white rubber gloves, ventures out most days to shop for strangers who can’t leave home.

The 16-year-old high school junior is not alone. Six Feet Supplies, a free student-led service, has used more than 100 volunteers to deliver more than $27,000 of food to 260 homes in targeted areas of L.A. County in the past six weeks. Another group of teens developed a platform that allows neighbors to request or donate goods and services.

At a time when many adults have been left feeling anxious and overwhelmed by the spread of COVID-19, students from six Santa Clarita Valley high schools have stepped into the gap. The delivery service serves Santa Clarita, the city of San Fernando and West Los Angeles.

“A lot of parents just think we’re always on our phones or always playing games,” said Avi Basnet, a 16-year-old Valencia High junior who wrote much of the coding for the Supply Neighbor website. “It’s really nice to prove them wrong. That we actually can, like, make a difference in the world.”

The idea for Six Feet Solutions started with Zoe Monterola and Eric Luo, juniors who studied together at Global Prep Academy, an after-school program. GPA’s curriculum emphasizes community involvement, so days after Santa Clarita’s high schools were locked down in mid-March, Monterola and Luo figured GPA could expand that idea community-wide and quickly developed a program to make it happen. Clients can go to the Six Feet Supplies website, provide their personal info and a shopping list

Armed with that information, the group dispatches students to collect the goods, pay for them and deliver them to the client’s door, texting a copy of the receipt so they can be repaid online.

“There are a lot of small interactions that make it worth it,” said Riel. “You obviously don’t know your customer that well. But when we understood that they really are people that you need to help, that’s what made it really fulfilling.

On a recent weekday afternoon Riel rendezvoused in a supermarket parking lot with classmates Krysta Mendoza and Shaira Busnawi.

Masked and gloved, the girls began in the produce section, tossing produce into the cart, when Riel’s phone pinged. The client, a retired teacher named Randy Gilpin, wanted to add some strawberries to his order.

Most of the shopping trips are routine. But Busnawi said she was once asked to buy a case of wine.

“I was like, ‘I don’t know if you know this, but I’m still 16,’” said Busnawi.

‘A lot of parents just think we’re always on our phones or always playing games. It’s really nice to prove them wrong. That we actually can, like, make a difference in the world.’ Avi Basnet, 16, Valencia High School

LOS ANGELES TIMES / TNS Christine Riel (left), 16, and Krysta Mendoza, 17, of Santa Clarita, California, fill an order at Albertson’s grocery store. Both are volunteers with Six Feet Supplies, a free service started by local teenagers to help others during the pandemic.