Volunteers Hunger to Help Less Fortunate : Humanitarianism: Food Share, a regional organization that distributes nearly 9 million pounds of provisions a year, boasts a corps of local helpers.

It’s a big operation that is run mostly on faith.

That’s how Jim Mangis describes Food Share, Ventura County’s regional food bank that distributes nearly 9 million pounds of food to the hungry each year.

Although it has a full-time staff of 10, including Mangis, who serves as its director, Food Share is dependent on more than 500 volunteers to keep things running smoothly. Most are retired.

They are people like Charles Niell, 75, a former optician who works as a forklift operator at Food Share’s Oxnard warehouse.

“I’m here every Monday, except when I’m not physically able,” Niell said. But that’s not often. Despite two open-heart surgeries and three heart attacks, Niell proudly proclaims, “I’m still here.”

Niell said he loves his job because it gives him a good feeling to know he’s helping others less fortunate. “We see the hungry fed and that’s what it’s all about,” he said.

Although he has put in more than eight years at Food Share, Niell beams with pride when he mentions his wife, Claudia, who recently celebrated 10 years as a truck dispatcher with the food bank.

“She got her gold pin,” he said.

George Langston, 76, a former high school counselor, and John Van Buskirk, 62, a retired engineer, are also Food Share volunteers. Both manage harvesting teams that pick surplus crops from area farms that work with the food bank.

Langston’s crew recently spent an early morning shift picking broccoli at Boskovich Farms in Camarillo. Langston said he doesn’t mind the work.

“I like working in the fields,” he said. “It’s great exercise and you get out in the fresh air. I also like the camaraderie.”

And then there is Jack Layton, a 74-year-old retired Marine who has worked as Food Share’s warehouse foreman for the last eight years.

Layton, who has been showing up to work lately in a Santa’s hat with “Ho, Ho, Ho” emblazoned across the top, recently surprised co-workers when he offered a gift of his own to Food Share: a check for $10,000.

“I don’t want to make a big deal about it,” he said. “I’m just giving back a little of what the country has given me the last 50 or 60 years.”

Mangis said he was humbled, but not surprised, by Layton’s generosity.

“If you knew him, it would not be a surprise,” he said.

Indeed, this spirit of generosity is passed on to all the beneficiaries of the food bank, Mangis said.

“We’re not just feeding people,” he said. “We’re also giving them hope.”