Serve Charity or Council? She’s Putting the Poor First

A single mother of three had barely enough money to pay for a cut-rate bag of groceries at the Adopt-A-Neighbor food program.

Then she spied a sign describing the fund-raising drive for the food bank and reached back into her purse for her last dollar, handing it to program director Kathryn McCullough.

“She said, ‘Keep that, I want to make sure you can keep on feeding people like me,’ ” said McCullough, who also sits on the Lake Forest City Council. “It touched me so deeply, I had a hard time not bawling right there.”

This is a time for tender emotions--and tough decisions--for McCullough.

After feeding about 100,000 poor people in the Saddleback Valley for 17 years, McCullough’s food bank has run out of money, forcing her to make what she calls the hardest choice of her life.

The food program needs a $10,000 grant from the federal government to keep the power on and pay thousands of dollars in back rent. But citing conflict-of-interest concerns, federal officials won’t approve the funds while McCullough both runs the community program and serves on the City Council, which administers the grant.

So McCullough, who was elected in November 1994--and is the only African American to ever sit on a city council in Orange County--has told city officials that she will resign from the council by the first week in May.

But something extraordinary has started to happen. All the charity that McCullough has given out over nearly two decades is starting to come back to her.

Plain white envelopes with a single $5 or $10 bill appear on McCullough’s desk from the low-income people who are still getting bags of donated food from the program. And with time running out, the Lake Forest community that elected her to office is trying to help raise the $10,000 needed to keep the food bank afloat without losing the popular council member.

“I’m going to do whatever it takes to keep her on the council,” said Ernie Rettino Sr., a longtime McCullough supporter. “Instead of tithing to my church this week, I’m tithing to Kathy.”

This isn’t the first time the program, which has depended on donations and county funding, has had financial woes. However, the situation has never been so dire.

McCullough has until Monday to find $10,000. After that, she said, the operation must leave its office, where it is two months behind on the rent.

She had counted on a Community Development Block Grant that the federal government gives cities to pass out to local nonprofit groups.

Even though the food bank is in Mission Viejo, it helps people throughout the Saddleback Valley, so the council agreed last year to award $10,000 in block grant funds to Adopt-A-Neighbor.

But McCullough had applied for that grant before she was elected to the council. When the Los Angeles office of Housing and Urban Development found out about her dual role on the council and the food bank, it decided not to allow her an exemption from its conflict-of-interest regulations.

“There can’t be a situation where a person who exercises control over granting [block grant] funds works for a group getting the same funds,” said HUD planning director Herbert Roberts, who added that Adopt-A-Neighbor would be eligible for the funding if McCullough quits the council.

McCullough admits that she shouldn’t have counted on the funds.

“I just didn’t have a Plan B ready for that money [the $10,000 grant],” she said. “This is the tightest spot we’ve ever been in.”

McCullough, 53, has been an outspoken advocate in Lake Forest since she started the Adopt-A-Neighbor food program in 1969.

Yet the food bank was only the beginning of her involvement in the community. McCullough and her husband, Christopher D. McCullough, are co-pastors of the 40-member Mission Church in Lake Forest.

Long before she decided to run for office, she was a fixture in the audience at local council meetings, speaking out strongly on positions such as the need for mobile home rent control, increased spending for law enforcement and her opposition to El Toro Marine Air Station being converted into a civilian airport.

“I’d like for our community to learn participation,” she said. “I want to impart a sense of ownership” of the city to residents. . . . “As soon as you put ‘my’ before ‘city,’ the city becomes as much your property as your house.”

Adopt-A-Neighbor is her special project, the continuation of a lifelong desire to feed the hungry that McCullough says was passed along from her relatives when she was growing up in St. Louis.

“My grandmother and grandfather were very religious,” McCullough said. “They taught me that everybody is your neighbor, particularly when they’re in need.

“I saw [my grandmother] feed raggedy little neighbor children and bathe them, give them clean clothes and give them biscuits in a bag to take home,” she said. “I just saw it as a way of life, and as a child it just impressed me as the thing to do.”

As she grew into a young adult, McCullough took jobs cooking, cleaning and baby-sitting to earn money in order to buy food for the needy. Then, she’d catch a bus from her middle-class neighborhoods, hauling boxes of food to the St. Louis slums.

“I take a bus down to the inner city and pass out the food,” she said. “If somebody had a hole in their shoe, we’d find a piece of cardboard to cut out to fill the hole. It really doesn’t take much to make a difference in someone’s life.”

She met her husband-to-be in St. Louis nearly 40 years ago and the two were married a few years later. A career Marine, Christopher McCullough was transferred to El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in 1969. Shortly after moving into military housing at the base, Kathryn McCullough founded Adopt-A-Neighbor.

Today, in an office complex stuffed with 20 refrigerators, shelves bulging with donated food, Kathryn McCullough runs the food bank like a ringmaster, simultaneously shouting orders to volunteers, answering phones, soothing the children who constantly seem underfoot and somehow bringing order to the chaos.

“There are so few places to get help [in South County] when you need help,” she said. “And believe it or not, people do need help down here.

“You see that big, fancy house?” she asked as she sat at her desk, talking and filling out paperwork. “It’s mortgaged to the eyebrows. You see that big, fancy car? It’s leased. And it’s so hard for somebody who once had these things to come in here and ask for food.”

Over the years, the couple’s labors have won glowing praise.

Adopt-A-Neighbor “helps a tremendous amount of people,” said Lake Forest attorney Thomas Whaling, a volunteer for the Westminster-based Shelter for the Homeless and a political ally of McCullough’s. “She works with the poorest of the poor, people who don’t have anything.”

After paying bills and rent out of his Social Security check, Lake Forest resident Steve Chotouane, 72, says he has only $20 left for the rest of the month.

“I thank God for this place,” he said outside the Adopt-A-Neighbor office. “You should see it here on Fridays when all the old people come here. If this place wasn’t here, we wouldn’t have no place to get something to eat.”

The program’s $100,000 annual budget is funded mainly by donations and a $40,000 grant from the county. McCullough said she has taken a second and third loan on the Lake Forest home she owns with her husband to pay for past shortfalls.

Although the program still gets donations and county support, expenses have exceeded revenue and private contributions have dropped about 25% in recent years while McCullough is feeding more and more people.

Now, the couple’s savings have run dry, and the food bank’s $2,500 monthly rent is two months overdue. McCullough said the landlord has given the organization until Monday to pay or leave. The landlord could not be reached for comment.

“She hates to ask people for money, that’s why this current situation has been so hard on her,” her husband said. “But this is not just a City Council problem, it’s a community problem. I’ve seen so many people get fed by this program, but they just keep coming.”

Faced with the gut-wrenching choice between keeping her council seat or abandoning the food bank, she chose Adopt-A-Neighbor.

“Words can’t describe how hard it was to make that choice,” she said. “I made a commitment to serve the people here and it’s very hurtful [to resign] because I’m a woman of my word.”

While expressing sympathy at McCullough’s situation, fellow Lake Forest Councilman Peter Herzog said there’s little the city can do financially.

“I don’t think we can treat that organization differently solely because [McCullough] is on the council,” he said. “I think that would send the wrong message to the other nonprofits in our community. However, I certainly hope something can be worked out so that she doesn’t have to resign.”

The news of McCullough’s announced resignation has spread to neighboring cities, where officials have expressed dismay.

“We constantly hear talk from politicians over how society needs to shoulder its share of the load by supporting charities,” Laguna Niguel Councilman Mark Goodman said. “To me, [McCullough’s dilemma] sends a terrible message to people that we don’t mean what we say.”

Goodman said he and City Manager Tim Casey will look into whether Laguna Niguel can financially assist the food bank.

“What’s happening is a shame,” he said. “I’d be really disappointed if I don’t see her on that council anymore. She’s a voice in South County that is needed.”

But McCullough said she does not think the community will let that happen. So far, the group has collected $4,300 from people eager to help. Those who’ve raised funds promise to help again next year. But for now, time is short and there’s no guarantee of a happy ending.

“I’m trusting God for a miracle, but I’m also prepared for anything,” she said, bringing her hands together with a loud clap for emphasis. “I believe with all my heart that the community will not let us down.”