BURBANK : Hungry to Receive Special Mail Delivery

U. S. Postal Service letter carriers across the San Fernando Valley--and the nation--will be collecting cans of food for the needy Saturday.

The special delivery will be just in time for many food banks and charities.

“This is when our donations really decrease, between now and November,” said Cherie Combs, executive director of the Burbank Temporary Aid Center. “People are more likely to think about vacations and back-yard barbecues than about needy people.”

The postal workers’ union, The National Assn. of Letter Carriers, organized the special pickup. Almost 200 postal union locals nationwide, including most of those in the San Fernando Valley, will pick up food left in or next to mailboxes as they deliver the mail on Saturday.

The last such collection was Dec. 12, when more than one million pounds of food was collected in a broad area stretching from the Valley to Santa Barbara, said Terri Bouffiou, the postal department’s program specialist for Southern California.

“We were completely overwhelmed,” said Don Laird, president of the letter carriers’ union local in Burbank, in describing the December collection. Mail carriers had been expecting only a can or two per resident. Instead, people left out full shopping bags, which is why he and other postal workers, delivering routes of 400 to 600 homes each, look forward to Saturday with some apprehension.

“There’s a couple of times during the day when you question yourself, but at the end of the day it’s a good feeling,” Laird said.

The need for food has increased since the beginning of the year, say those who assist the poor. At the Burbank center, demand for food has outstripped donations since January, Combs said. Donations drop even further in the summer, she said.

Officials say the food collected will assist local neighbors in need.

“All the food is staying in the communities,” Bouffiou said. “And we prefer non-fragile items.”

A bag of potato chips or a jar of olives might break or be crushed, she said, Bouffiou said. “But we’ll take whatever people put out,” she said.