On an early Wednesday morning, a few hours before the start of a walk-up food distribution at Rimgrove Park in La Puente, about a couple of dozen individuals lined up to be one of the hundreds of families that would benefit from the food assistance provided by the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, and in partnership with LA County Supervisor Hilda Solis.
A simple text message sent days before would alert residents of La Puente and its neighboring communities of the opportunity to receive fresh produce, shelf-stable items, dairy products, a protein item, eggs, and in this specific distribution, baby diapers and wipes. For many, the assistance would help them and their families for around a week to two weeks.
Things are tough, and seniors like Carmen Camacho are feeling it. Camacho, a recent retiree, seeks food distributions to help her and her senior neighbors get through the month. Although she hasn’t qualified to get CalFresh before retiring, she is considering applying to the program again. But for now, she makes ends meet by attending food distributions,
“It’s crazy right now, out there, we all know that,” she said. “There’s an inflation, and we have to get what we can get.”
It’s thanks to strategic partnerships that the Food Bank can serve Los Angeles County and maximize its reach. Before the pandemic, the Food Bank worked with the County and its Board of Supervisors to host food distributions throughout the County. These distributions maximized to massive drive-through distributions when the pandemic hit LA County in March 2020, and ever since, the two have been working tirelessly to provide food assistance to our neighbors.
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