Food and Charity : From Market to Market

It is 6:30 a.m., daybreak, as a white van, emblazoned with the word LIFE, pulls up to the Hughes market in Burbank. Celso Gaspar straps on a thick weightlifting belt as he jumps out of the van. The receiver recognizes Gaspar as he walks up the ramp to the loading dock and immediately waves him in.

Gaspar is a preferred customer here--he never waits in line and he never pays for what he takes. Today he grabs a grocery cart and heads for the meat department. The butcher sees him coming. He walks over to the deep-freeze, pulls out packages of chicken breasts and freezer-burned hamburger patties and hands them over. Gaspar thanks him, puts the meat into the cart and pushes his way to the deli department. There, the manager nods hello and hands Gaspar cartons of salsa and bacon. Adding it to the growing pile, Gaspar heads for the bakery. “Nothing today,” says the bakery manager. Gaspar thanks her anyway. “I’ll check with you tomorrow,” he tells her.

Back at the loading dock, piled near the steel door, 12 Chiquita banana boxes heaped with bruised and overripe fruits and vegetables are set aside for Gaspar. He takes the boxes, but there’s so much it takes two trips to collect it all. By 7 a.m., the food has been inventoried and loaded into the van.

On the freeway, traffic is beginning to back up. It takes almost 45 minutes to get to Vons in Pacific Palisades, Gaspar’s next stop. But it’s worth it. By the time Gaspar leaves Vons, he’s got five boxes of bread, meat and cheese. The van is filling up rapidly and there are still seven more stores to hit before the day is over. The work is exhausting, but Gaspar never complains.

*

LIFE’s food recovery network follows daily routes to participating grocery stores, produce markets, bakeries and wholesalers. Collectors pick up boxes of dented cans, deli items, dairy products and other perishable but still edible food that would otherwise get tossed out. LIFE also relies on food drives and donations from manufacturers.

Founded 10 years ago by actors Dennis Weaver and Valerie Harper, the nonprofit organization LIFE (Love Is Feeding Everyone) started out feeding 400 people a month. Now, there are more than 125 agencies depending on LIFE to help them feed 120,000 people in Los Angeles County each week . Like the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, LIFE gives food to distribution agencies, not directly to the poor.

But with more than one-fourth of the children in Los Angeles living below the poverty level, it’s become clear that simply feeding people is not enough. “There isn’t a day that passes that someone doesn’t call and say, ‘Can you help us?’ ” says LIFE president James Schiffner. “We try to put them in the loop as quickly as possible.

“You have to give people something to do, a way to move forward,” Schiffner says. “A lot of the people we feed come back over and over again, like welfare.”

That’s why LIFE has started a job development program providing training and job placement for former gang members and other at-risk youth, giving them a means to earn money to feed themselves. It’s sort of a bridge between two worlds--that of the inner-city unemployed and corporate America.

“It’s the first thing I implemented when I came in as president,” says Schiffner. “We were giving workers 30 pounds of food a day. I thought: ‘This is horrible. We aren’t really helping them. It would help more if we gave them dollars and gave them skills.’ ”

*

One of those now on their feet, thanks to LIFE, is 23-year-old Gaspar, who entered California illegally seven years ago to pick grapes in the Napa Valley. Three years ago, Gaspar gave up grapes for groceries and began working in the LIFE warehouse to get food. Today he is here legally, is about to take his high school equivalency test and earns $21,000 a year at his job at the LIFE warehouse. “I like what I do,” he says, “and I will stay there as long as they need me.”

Recently, Gaspar stopped by Great Western Savings and Loan to cash his paycheck and had to wait while the teller searched for his signature card. Finally, Gaspar called her attention to a poster on the wall. “You see that picture of Dennis Weaver?” he said, proudly pointing to the Great Western spokesman. “I work for him. Don’t worry, the check is good.”

Love Is Feeding Everyone, 310 N. Fairfax Ave., Second Floor, Los Angeles. (213) 936-0895.

Wish List: canned goods, non-perishable goods, money. “No matter how much food we need,” says Schiffner, “the overhead kills us.”