News

When you meet a big white refrigerated truck on a local road, look closely to see if “Community Food Rescue” is written on the side.

If it is, you may be seeing an example of neighborliness in action.

The driver wrestling the truck around a corner may be a retired physician. His sidekick may be a former city of Charlotte engineer. Or a woman reputed to be one of the best golfers at the Peninsula Club.

These and more than 40 other Community Food Rescue volunteers from northern Mecklenburg and southern Iredell counties are “a real hodgepodge,” says their leader, retired urologist Dale Ensor of Cornelius.

These people from varied backgrounds have organized themselves into something special: the Community Food Rescue organization, which picks up donated perishable food and delivers it to groups that feed the hungry.

‘A ton of good food’

Community Food Rescue operates under the umbrella of Second Harvest. Typically, food pickup and delivery within Mecklenburg is by paid employees who are assisted by volunteers, says J.D. Fuller, operations manager of Second Harvest. But Community Food Rescue is run completely by volunteers. “We just let them run it because they’re so good at it,” says Fuller. “They have a great system.”

Two-person teams of volunteers take turns driving the 24-foot box truck, a gift from USAirways, to more than a dozen grocery stores and other food sources between Interstate 77 Exits 23 and 36. They pick up perishable food that would otherwise be headed for the landfill and take it to local organizations that either cook or distribute it.

“Anytime you prepare food for a large group, it’s a guess as to how many will show up, and how much they’ll eat,” says Davidson College Presbyterian Church associate pastor Julie Hill. The church has regular Wednesday evening dinners, and when part of that hot meal goes unclaimed, they call the volunteers. “We’re glad to be able to share it,” she says.

At the dozen grocery stores the group visits, when perishables approach their “sell by” dates, “They know they’re not going to sell it all in a day or so, so they give it to us,” says Ensor.

Ensor, who joined Community Food Rescue 10 years ago, remembers thinking “Man, this is good stuff!” when he first saw the donated food.

Their loads are eagerly awaited at the end of the teams’ routes, where five agencies either cook and serve it on-site or distribute it for take-home use. The recipients are the Mooresville Soup Kitchen, the Huntersville United Methodist Church pantry, Ada Jenkins Center Loaves and Fishes in Davidson, Harvest Center in northwest Charlotte and Cooperative Christian Ministries in Concord.

The 150 diners at Mooresville Soup Kitchen, says Director Jody Schwandt, are a mixed group. “Some have retired and are living on a fixed income. Some are unemployed. We have the working poor, working menial jobs where they don’t make enough money.

“You can imagine – fresh produce is a treat,” she says.

Volunteer Buddy Lippard, 80, once picked up the record haul for one day with fellow Davidson retiree Jack Packard: 3,200 pounds.

“These merchants are really very cordial and very nice, and they give us a ton of good food,” he says.

That can be taken literally. The volunteers deliver more than a ton each week – they handle 5,000 to 6,000 pounds, or 300,000 pounds a year. The truck is on the road five days a week, but the volunteers are so numerous that most work only a half-day a month.

Female volunteers aren’t deterred by the heavy lifting. When Ensor told one woman that volunteers need to be able to lift 40 pounds, she told him: “I work out at the gym three or four times a week. I think I can do it.”

‘We’ll take all you have’

One woman, Denise Washburn of Huntersville, has been volunteering for the group for a dozen years. Before she joined, she drove daily from Huntersville to Charlotte to work, and she was so distressed by the sight of people begging for food along the street that she was contemplating raising money for a private food distribution effort.

Then she read about Community Food Rescue. “It was like, ‘Aha. Great. I don’t even have to get the truck. All I need to do is volunteer.’”

Her second son was born later that year, and “as soon as he was 4 weeks old, my mother came and kept him once a month and I drove the truck.”

She’s been struck by the satisfaction she gets from her morning rounds, and by the ripple effect of goodwill and caring.

Once, she says, a clerk at a coffee shop in Birkdale “helped me carry bagels out to the truck and he said, ‘Do you mind if I pray over these?’”

He prayed, she says, for whomever was going to receive them.

Another time, she was in the parking lot of a grocery when a woman stopped her. “I have, from my garden, some squash and cucumbers and tomatoes,” the woman said. She handed them to Washburn.

Stories like those are likely to continue during the winter season. The recession has prompted a heightened awareness of need, Ensor says. “People are looking out more for what they can give.”

Agencies need all the help they can get. Some recipient sites that in the past asked for only a limited delivery now say, “We’ll take all you have,” he says.

Adds volunteer Lippard: “Folks have got to have food.”

Want to help?

Prospective volunteers can contact Ensor at lmlmensor@bellsouth.net. If there are no routes available or if the 40-pound lifting requirement is a deterrent, recipient agencies welcome volunteers for other tasks. They are:

Mooresville Soup Kitchen, 704-506-1641 Huntersville United Methodist Church Pantry, 704-875-1156 Ada Jenkins Center Loaves and Fishes, Davidson, 704-896-0471 The Harvest Center, Charlotte, 704-333-4280, ext. 107 Cooperative Christian Ministry, Concord, 704-786-4709, ext. 13.