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Saturday's Internet Edition, July 31, 2010.
River Valley post offices begin food drive
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Photo by Sheri Barile
Sloughhouse postal carrier Victor Carlson loads up his truck for his morning deliveries. Postal carriers throughout the River Valley will be picking up food donations at mail delivery sites on May 8, which is the national Stamp Out Hunger food drive.
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By Sheri Barile
River Valley Times Reporter
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River Valley post offices serving Rancho Murieta, Sloughhouse and Wilton will pitch in again this year during Stamp Out Hunger, the nation’s largest annual food drive slated Saturday, May 8.
According to postmasters Alan Brown of Sloughhouse and Marvin Yokoi of Wilton, letter carriers will collect non-perishable donations at homes and other mail delivery sites on the day of the drive.
Collection containers will also be made available at the post offices a week prior to collection day. In addition, Plaza Foods at Murieta Plaza will provide a collection location in the store, and St. Vincent De Paul and RM Community churches will have collection containers available for the week preceding the drive through May 9.
All collected donations will be delivered to the Elk Grove Food Bank. According to John Cunningham, the food bank’s operations manager, they will be ready to distribute the food to residents in the Zip Code areas from which the donations came.
Brown said that donations in recent years have kept his carriers busy on the day of the annual drive. Yokoi echoed this. “The carriers get quite a work out that day,” Yokoi said. “They’re really hustling.”
Cunningham said 781 lbs were collected last year in Sloughhouse and RM, and Wilton’s donations weighed in at 875 lbs. Nationally, carriers collected 73.4 million pounds of food in 2009.
The Elk Grove Food Bank suffered a dramatic decline in donations last year, which Director Marie Jachino attributes to tough economic conditions throughout the region. This comes at the same time as need has risen to peak levels.
“The demand for food has risen significantly as the recession lingers and unemployment remains high,” Jachino said. “There are families that have never before needed help and are now turning to the Food Bank for assistance.”
Jachino added that the one out of 24 people in the areas served by Elk Grove Food Bank are now in need of assistance, which represents an 80% increase over the past two years. This area includes the River Valley, and seniors and children are most affected.
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