SEAL BEACH : Network Distributes Food to the Needy

Arlene Mercer is one of those people who just can’t look away when she comes across a homeless person.

For years, the plight of the homeless has troubled the Seal Beach woman. But she doubted that she alone could do anything to help them.

“I kept seeing more and more of them on the street, and I felt something had to be done,” she said. “It seemed to me like one person couldn’t do a whole lot.”

Then, in 1989, she read an Ann Landers newspaper column that detailed how concerned citizens on the East Coast had formed a volunteer network to provide food to disadvantaged people.

So Mercer embarked on a mission to duplicate such an organization in Orange County. Three years later, her network boasts 125 volunteers who collect and distribute food to 50 agencies, including rescue missions for the homeless, a shelter for battered women and a hospice.

Each month, Seal Beach-based Food Finders hands out about 30,000 pounds of food. This month the organization will provide its millionth pound of food, Mercer said.

Food Finders’ success can be attributed in part to the simplicity of its distribution system.

Volunteers collect donated goods from bakeries, restaurants and supermarkets and then immediately distribute them to a pre-selected set of agencies.

The process requires no expensive refrigeration because “the span of time (the food) is in the vehicle is (the same) as going from the grocery store to home,” Mercer said. It also allows Food Finders to offer a wider variety of food choices.

In addition, the organization collects food from various canned-food drives and other church and community events.

The project has made Mercer’s already busy life even more so. The network is run out of her home, and she juggles her charitable responsibilities with her full-time job as an administrator at a Long Beach physical therapy office.

But, Mercer said, it’s worth the time.

“It feels good to be part of the solution,” she said.