If you chanced to visit Gilroy’s St. Joseph Family Center last
Friday morning, you’d find it in a state of ordered chaos. The
reason: Thanksgiving Day was a week away.
Canned food filled cardboard boxes, paper bags and Safeway
shopping carts.
If you chanced to visit Gilroy’s St. Joseph Family Center last Friday morning, you’d find it in a state of ordered chaos. The reason: Thanksgiving Day was a week away.
Canned food filled cardboard boxes, paper bags and Safeway shopping carts.
Frozen turkeys flooded a freezer floor. Volunteers hustled through groceries, sorting them for distribution.
That morning, these hard-working volunteers prepared for the two “big days” quickly approaching – the pre-Thanksgiving Monday and Tuesday when South Valley families in need would come to St. Joseph’s and receive a frozen turkey and all the fixings.
Although it might look frenzied, there was method to the madness, coordinator Jacqui Merriman assured me as we took a tour of St. Joseph’s food distribution facilities.
The Gilroy-born woman described her job as the best one she’s ever had, “playing Santa Claus” to people from Gilroy, Morgan Hill, Hollister and surrounding communities. Her face glowed with the joy of time generously spent making a difference in the region.
“We never send anyone from St. Joseph’s away without food,” she said.
She described the generosity of the South Valley community – especially during the holiday season.
That morning, Gavilan Community College students had dropped off seven supermarket carts and dozens of large boxes overflowing with cans collected in classrooms. Fifty-nine paper sacks stuffed with groceries had arrived from a Nob Hill Food Store where customers contributed $10 for each bag. Local schools donated thousands of cans.
The food goes mostly to local families.
But homeless individuals living out of cars or in campground tents also get a share. Brown-bag dinners go to folks waiting for Gilroy’s National Guard Armory to open for the winter.
Many of the movers and shakers of South Valley freely give their time helping St. Joseph’s. During my tour, I met Val Filice, “the Godfather of Garlic” and one of the founding fathers of Gilroy’s Garlic Festival. He’d be roasting turkeys on Thanksgiving Day for the Lord’s Table, a hot-meals organization run in conjunction with St. Joseph’s.
At the end of the tour, Merriman handed me a pair of ski gloves. “Now we’ll put you to work,” she said with a gleeful grin.
That morning, I had come to St. Joseph’s to volunteer on the front-line of hunger. I’d told David Cox, the center’s director, “I can lift things.” Well, er, now I’d indeed be doing my share of lifting.
In the center’s immense freezer, Arturo Ceja, a volunteer from Victory Outreach Men’s Home, and I started tossing 20-pound turkeys from shopping carts onto a steadily rising mountain of bird flesh.
A short while later, Ken Patel, another Victory Outreach volunteer, came in and realized we needed to relocate a dozen boxes of canned peaches buried deep in the freezer to make them more accessible.
I made my way up the mountain of turkey boulders and started to hand him the boxes as a fan blew an Arctic wind. My frozen ears burned with the chill.
Why do volunteers help out? I asked the men.
“It feels good,” Ceja said. “We’re reaching out to the people who need it.”
“It’s the best feeling … you can’t describe it,” Patel said. “The happiness on their faces…”
The beam in his own face finished his sentence for him.
After leaving the Arctic, my next mission was to help unload a van full of breads and bakery goodies Gilroy’s Safeway store had provided.
Day-old cakes and muffins soon piled high on the counter of the center’s distribution area. As Ramona Niño placed groceries into plastic bags, her husband Jesus Niño and their son “Bubba” Euvaldo passed on the food to recipients waiting outside.
“We like working here one day a week – every Friday morning,” Ramona said. “It makes you feel real real good to help other people instead of sitting at home.”
My next task was to help Bob Scholtens and Richard Janisch unload a Monarch truck filled with canned food just picked up from San Jose’s Second Harvest organization. Whole kernel corn, peas, pinto beans and 550 pounds of Starkist Tuna cans.
The two men took turns rolling the pallets of boxed cans onto the truck’s lift. I served in the strenuous job as elevator operator. I pushed the side button lowering or raising the truck’s rear lift.
“You’re getting real good with that button stuff,” Scholtens told me.
“Yeah,” I said with a grin. “I know how to push people’s buttons.”
After emptying the truck, the three of us drove it over to the Gilroy Grocery Outlet store on First Street. We needed to pick up 200 turkeys store owners Greg and Beth Balch were donating to St. Joseph’s. Two pallets laden with boxes (four turkeys to a box) were forklifted into the back of the Monarch truck – all part of a special store “gobble gobble” promotion.
As we finished loading the truck, I listened to a woman customer over the public address system do her best turkey imitation. Customers were randomly selected every ten minutes for the contest.
“All they have to do is gobble,” Greg explained. “The customer gets a free turkey and St. Joseph’s gets a turkey.”
Why did the Balches decide to donate so many turkeys?
“St. Joseph’s is such a pillar in this community,” Greg said. “It’s nice to see people eating at Thanksgiving.”
After depositing the turkeys into St. Joseph’s freezer, our next trip was to a small warehouse the center keeps in an industrial area of town. Janisch rolled up the metal door and I saw stacked boxes of USDA-approved foods. Pineapple juice, dry milk, peanut butter, ramen noodles.
Janisch, a volunteer for 12 years, used a forklift to place several pallets of collapsed cardboard boxes inside the Monarch truck. The boxes would hold food distributed on Monday and Tuesday.
“This time of year, it gets really hectic,” he said. “It’s too bad people don’t remember we have 50 more weeks we have to scrounge for.”
Around noon when we returned to the center, I met two 12-year-old Ascension Solorsano Middle School students in the driveway. They’d just delivered 20 Nob Hill turkeys for the Lord’s Table Thanksgiving banquet.
Principal Sal Tomasello had driven them over with the frozen birds along with 3,330 cans of food collected in a school-wide competition. A pre-Algebra class won first place, ASB President Danielle Jimenez informed me.
ASB Secretary Sean Bay told me she “felt really good” providing the food. “I encourage other kids and schools to do it,” she said.
I myself felt really good seeing youngsters like Jimenez and Bay give time and energy to a worthy cause: caring for other people. In America today, more than 12 million households go hungry, according to a report released by the Agricultural Department on the Friday morning I helped out at the St. Joseph’s Family Center.
Hunger is a fact of life for many Americans. But in the South Valley, many who might go without food know there are local people who’ll help them survive.
“Our community is generous,” Merriman told me. “St. Joseph’s has a huge unseen workforce. There’s a vast network of people with kind hearts. They want to make a difference in the world.”
Turkeys
Canned yams
Canned goods
Stuffing mix
Sugar (5-lb sacks)
Olives
Flour (5-lb sacks)
Cooking oil
Cranberry sauce
Potatoes
Celery
Onions
Chicken broth
Toys (new)
– for kids 10 years old and under
Drop off times: 8am to 11:30am or 1pm to 3:30pm Monday through Friday. 7950 Church St., Suite A, Gilroy. (408) 842-6662
