Locals donate 4 tons to food bank

After a delivery last week had added to the meager stores at the Care and Share Food Bank a couple weeks ago, volunteers came once again to unload another truck on Thursday, this time stuffing shelves with the proceeds made possible by local donations last fall.

If you wondered exactly when that donation you made at Safeway to the local food bank last November or December would actually arrive, the answer is last week.

"This is the time of year we really need that," said Carol Nordine, the volunteer manager of the food bank, while people were busy carting in some 651 cases of food weighing 8,252 pounds.

The Northwest Harvest truck delivered the goods from a Safeway facility in Yakima.

Shawn Bolger, the Grand Coulee Safeway manager, and his wife Wendy Bolger, hoisted cases Thursday, along with about a dozen other volunteers.

The Bolgers just took the job in Grand Coulee, coming from Richland, which gave him a good comparison for community response.

"For this size community, 1,000 bags is tremendous," he said, noting that the response in Richland had been about 4,000 bags. "People really stepped up."

Richland's population is about 56,000. The Grand Coulee Dam area is home to around 4,000.

Bolger noted the 1,000 bag figure was approximate; he couldn't get an exact figure from the warehouse.

During the holiday season, Safeway has offered to facilitate individual shopper donations by collecting the money and arranging the shipment of the food in an arrangment more efficient than the former method of physically collecting food in each store for local delivery.

As the shelves filled Thursday, Nordine said she likes the bulk truckload delivery better.