Lakeview Pantry West

Location: Lakeview Pantry West

Date: Saturday, September 06, 2014; 10:00 am-1:15 pm

The serene road to 'Lakeview Pantry West'

It was the first time since ‘Valentine’s Day’ that I was going to Lakeview Pantry.  It was a nice day and the walk from the train station takes one through a pleasant neighborhood.  As I entered the basement, I saw Carrie who recognized and greeted me.  A volunteer was unloading a truck with produce and other boxes and so that became the first order of business.  After everything had been unloaded, it was time to weight it, since every item of food that comes in is weighed for reporting purposes.  There were donations from 2 places – ‘Plum Market’ and ‘Trader Joe’s’ and each had to be weighed separately. I worked with a Lakeview volunteer by placing everything on the scale while she wrote down the numbers.  Two gentlemen came in and one person had his son and daughter with him.  They had boxes with leftovers from the little girls 5^th birthday and all of those items needed to be weighed as well.  It had been less than half an hour and I already had a workout!

After all of the weighing had been done, I took out the trash and then broke down the boxes for recycling.  All the volunteers were sorting produce to decide what to keep and to throw away.  I worked on the corn – we had lots of it – and the bananas, trying my best to guess which could be saved and those bananas I placed in a box by the doorway, for people to pick on their way out. Next, we had to get the meat out of the freezer and stack it in its rightful place on the shelves.  After that came the eggs, milk and yogurt from the refrigerator.  There were several cases of yogurt and since there was going to be maintenance on the fridge soon, Carrie wanted us to hand out as much of the yogurt as possible to the clients.  “Make a tower of the yogurt crates”, she said.  As we arranged the meat, one of the volunteers told me that if the sealed package containing the meat was puffed up, then it meant that the meat had gone bad and needed to be tossed out.  And she didn't even eat meat.  There is always something new to learn at these projects!

After umpteen trips to the refrigerator to get things for the shelves, we seemed to have most of the items displayed for the initial surge and so Carrie sat down to assign duties.  Since I was one of the experience volunteers, she appointed me to be a floater and help out as required.  The clients started coming in and we commenced on the cycle of serving them.  I was helping restock as required, especially the yogurt, which we were encouraging people to carry home in bulk.  One lady, who was having difficulty walking, asked if I could help her carry groceries home.  Well, I would have certainly liked to have helped her, but did not want to say yes without knowing where she lived.  She said that she was right across the street, which made it easier, and so helped take her bags up the stairs to her front door.

By this stage I was running out of gas and Carrie appointed me to hand out some coupons for an hour of “free shopping” at a neighborhood “Rummage Sale” this afternoon.  I went about asking the clients if they wanted a coupon and managed to give all of them away in less than 2 minutes. Carrie said that I should help out in the clothing section in the back and I would be working with the volunteer who had told me about the meat.  She was sorting clothes and those that were not being kept, were going into bags which would be placed in a green colored pickup bin located outside.  My job was to carry these bags and over the duration of the next 30 minutes, there were several of those.  This was followed by a request to take boxes out to the recycling bin.  I could well have been called “The Muscle” for this session! 

I came back to find that all the clients had left and the volunteer at the deli section had done a terrific job of getting all the yogurt distributed.  Carrie asked us to help restock the shelves with whatever cans had run out, by getting them from the pantry.  We did that and then the final task was to transfer everything from the refrigerator – since it was being serviced – to another in the adjacent church.  By the time we were done I was thoroughly exhausted but I never mind doing all of this for someone like Carrie.  When people talk about leaders for whom one does whatever is asked, they could well be describing her. And she leads not by authority, but with dignity and through kindness. She has been and will always be the best site representative that I have had the privilege to work with.