Director Helps Food Bank, as It Helped Her

Gina Mirabella was broke, hungry and living in a garage nearly 15 years ago when she first stood in line for a box of donated groceries at a Pacoima food bank. Today, she runs the same food bank where she once sought help.

Mirabella, who oversees three paid staff members and 70 volunteers who give away about 170,000 pounds of food to 30,000 hungry people each month, said her efforts are her way of giving thanks to the agency that helped her “get back on her feet.”

“Gina’s story is a wonderful example of how individuals come to MEND with close to nothing, and slowly make life-changing moves to become an asset to not only an organization, but to the community it serves,” said Marianne Haver Hill, the agency’s executive director.

MEND, the nonprofit agency that runs the food bank, acknowledged Mirabella’s work recently by naming a remodeled training kitchen after her and her husband, Joe Mirabella, also a longtime agency volunteer.

An energetic woman in her 50s, Mirabella doesn’t pass judgment on those who seek help, knowing first-hand that hard times can fall on anyone.

Born in Lithuania, the former Gina Leita and her parents fled to Germany during World War II. The elder Leitas were killed in a bombing raid, leaving their 5-year-old daughter to be raised in a series of Roman Catholic orphanages until she was 17.

“Everything changed all the time,” Mirabella said. “I was constantly moving from town to town. I never developed a relationship with anyone.

“People remember their kindergarten teachers or the kids they grew up with. I don’t have any of those memories.”

Despite intense loneliness and frequent nightmares, Mirabella managed to do well in school, especially in math and science. She won a scholarship from the German government to study pre-medicine at Temple University in Philadelphia in 1953.

After a few courses, however, Mirabella realized she wasn’t cut out to be a doctor and transferred to Ohio State University intending to study nursing. It was there that she met her first husband, and they moved to California in 1964.

The couple established a lucrative real estate business, which provided them with a home in Palos Verdes Estates, sports cars and a boat. After their two sons grew up, the couple decided to invest in a farm in Oregon.

But they knew nothing of farming and their adventure fell apart. They lost everything. Soon the marriage broke up.

Divorced and struggling emotionally, Mirabella lived out of her car and begged for food and money. “I lost all of my self-esteem,” she said. “My sons didn’t know my whereabouts. I just disappeared.”

Mirabella drove to Los Angeles in 1988 to look up a friend in the San Fernando Valley. The friend invited her to a storefront church in North Hills.

“After the service, I met with the minister and told him my problems,” she said. “He let me stay in his garage. He even built a loft up above so I could sleep there.”

The minister told Mirabella about a place called MEND where she could get food and clothes. At the time, MEND was a storefront operation on Van Nuys Boulevard. Hungry people lined up outside, filled out applications, were interviewed and, if approved, returned later for a box of food.

Mirabella was ashamed of her circumstances, she said, having fallen so far from prosperity into poverty. Yet, MEND workers were sympathetic and understanding. In many ways, they lived up to the group’s name, which stands for Meet Each Need with Dignity.

“They were very concerned about me,” she recalled. “They almost immediately sent a home visitor to see my living conditions. They wanted to see if I needed help with clothing and shoes. MEND looked at my total needs.”

To show her appreciation, Mirabella volunteered at the food bank during the day while she worked the graveyard shift as a waitress. She was later hired as volunteer coordinator and eventually named director of the food bank, the ninth largest in the state.

She shares her personal history when soliciting donations from community groups. “I grew up in an orphanage and my job was to go door to door, begging for food,” she will say. “And I’m still doing it.”

People sometimes ask her skeptically if MEND recipients are truly in need. Aren’t they just trying to get free food?

Mirabella tells them that when people stand in the hot sun for three, four or five hours to get a box of food, she knows they are needy. Anyone who is not needy, she said, would not do that.

“She treats people with respect and dignity because she knows how hard it is to stand in line and ask for food,” said Michael Flood, executive director of the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank. “In this day and age we ask, ‘Can only one or two people make a difference?’ [Gina is] a testament to that. You can’t calculate the magnitude of what she is doing.”

Mirabella is slowly piecing her own fragmented life back together. She reunited with her sons. And she met and fell in love with Joe Mirabella, a retired contractor. “He was a widower and I was the lost one,” she said. The couple, who now live in Woodland Hills, have been married 10 years.

Looking back, Mirabella said her lows--as well as her highs--have enriched her life. “All the bad things that happened to me were actually answered prayers.”