This is the third time Susan Hamilton and Karen Humber have
moved, but their resolve to support American troops remains.
By Chris Bone Staff Writer
Gilroy – This is the third time Susan Hamilton and Karen Humber have moved, but their resolve to support American troops remains.
The two women co-chair the Gilroy chapter of Operation Interdependence, a national volunteer-based program that sends letters and care packages of toiletries and Girl Scout cookies to soldiers currently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The operation is moving after 18 rent-free months at a warehouse owned by Precision Machining behind the old Wal-Mart on Camino Arroyo. The company recently found a renter recently and had allowed the women to set up shop in its space until then.
To help the operation move its 25 pallets of boxes and foodstuffs Gilroy City Councilman Dion Bracco lent Hamilton and several volunteers two heavy-duty flatbed trucks.
“They needed a truck and someone to drive a forklift, so I said I’d do it,” said Bracco, who also sent two employees from his company, Bracco’s Towing to help out with last week’s move. He said he heard of the women’s efforts through the Gilroy Exchange Club.
The new 7,500-square-foot warehouse space belongs to Container Consulting Services Inc., a family owned packaging distributor on Mayock Road run by Georgia Trefts-Garfink, who has donated boxes to the effort for years. Humber’s husband, Bill Wagner, is a Rotarian, and the two women have spoken at the club about their philanthropy.
This has left Hamilton alone, but she said her “very efficient” volunteers haven’t slowed and send out about 50 boxes a month. Although this is down from the normal 100 boxes per month, Hamilton said the group only sends them out at commanders’ requests.
“If the troops are training, or if they are moving in the field, the packages can do more harm than good,” she said.
Each box contains assorted snacks and hygiene products and 50 letters that come from all over the western United States, Hamilton said, so no soldier in any one unit is left out.
Hamilton is a mother of three, and her daughter, Trillian, lives in Laguna Niguel and has been married to U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Lars Mauerman for a year and a half. Mauerman, a Gilroy native four months into a deployment in Iraq after combat preparation in Kuwait, is one of the thousands of military personnel that receive care packages from Operation Interdependence, according to Hamilton.
“They say it means the world to them,” Hamilton said of her son-in-law and his band of brothers. “It makes a huge difference.”
