Food Banks

To Gladys Jacques' relief, a grocery bag filled with chicken, bread and canned corn or string beans arrives on her doorstep once a month, delivered by church volunteers. Retired, the 76-year-old registered nurse lives alone in South Los Angeles on a small Social Security income, hindered by diabetes and a stroke that makes it hard for her to walk. So the monthly deliveries from Bethel AME Church's food pantry help Jacques get by when times are tight.

Steven James, 43, works in finance, has multiple cellphones clipped to his belt and projects the air of a hardworking, successful sort of guy. And yet there he was last week, buying day-old bread at the Oroweat thrift store in South Pasadena. "Food's just so expensive," James said. "It's going up faster than salaries." He said he now seeks bargains like day-old bread wherever he can find them. It seems as if the cost of everything is outpacing people's pay these days.

Food pantry operators throughout the Los Angeles region report that demand for free groceries has surged to the highest level in recent memory this summer as the sagging economy has hit not only the poor, but also middle- and upper-class families. "This is probably the most people we've ever seen use emergency food assistance," said Darren Hoffman, communications director for the 35-year-old Los Angeles Regional Food Bank.

Some sought a cart of groceries the week before Thanksgiving, others sought a way to keep from losing their homes in the new year. By the thousands, a diverse group of Southern Californians converged on two events Saturday aimed at helping families in hard economic times. The problems, and the aid offered, were vastly different. But both reflected the worries and needs of many.

Photographer Troy Paiva journeyed to a remote corner of the Mojave Desert in search of the Exotic World of Burlesque Museum but quickly caught a whiff of something even more jolting. Instead of the stripper museum, which had recently abandoned dusty Helendale for Las Vegas, Paiva found mounds of rotting perishables, including a festering stew of whipped cream, eggnog and toothpaste.

Workers at an Orange County food bank had anything but sweet talk for President Bush on Friday as they sold desserts with such names as "Upside Down Priority Cake," "Fib Newtons," and "Double Cross Buns" to protest proposed cuts to a federal food program for the elderly. Food bank officials, usually surrounded by cans of meat and boxes of cheese, cooked up tastier fare prepared with a pinch of satire for their "budget bake sale" in front of a Stanton big box retailer.

Bob Randels, Rose Miller and Teresa Osborne spend most of their waking hours rescuing food. They're not Dumpster divers, but they are relentless in their pursuit of pizzas that weren't picked up, sub-shop bread that wasn't used and even small bags of shrimp from Red Lobster that didn't get tossed into a pasta Alfredo. Their efforts are part of a much larger, organized daily hustle to meet the increasing need -- especially in Midwestern states -- to feed the hungry.

Tom had been a working man his entire adult life. He made good money in the car business and parlayed that good fortune into trips to some of the world's great locales. As he approached his 60s, life was looking pretty sweet. But last week he found himself back at a destination that he never would have imagined visiting: a food distribution center in Laguna Beach. And instead of leaving with trinkets or lasting reminders of an exciting vacation, he walked away with two boxes of cereal, salmon patties, two cans of beef stew, scones and a loaf of bread.

Re "Obama expects harder times," Nov. 8 President-elect Barack Obama's massive plan for public works spending is a sign of political pragmatism: helping those who complain the loudest now, without regard for anyone else. Those other people who will be harmed by increased government spending -- employers who could have had more employees (now working for the government), producing goods that could have existed (supplanted by unnecessary bridges to nowhere), bought with additional money that could have been in the pockets of consumers (now taxed to pay for these jobs)

You "can never be too rich or too thin," said the Duchess of Windsor, who was wrong on both counts. As the economic crisis deepens, many Americans may soon discover what it means to be too thin, an insight that until now has been largely reserved for denizens of the developing world. This is changing. In January, U.S. food banks saw a 30% increase in the number of people who couldn't afford to buy enough food on their own, but 70% of food banks reported that they lacked the resources to feed those extra mouths.