SEQUIM — As wintry weather intensifies, Sara Fitzpatrick is thinking of people who might be going without food.
A volunteer at both the Sequim Senior Activity Center and the Sequim Food Bank, Fitzpatrick worries especially about those who can’t get to the pantry and wait in line during its Monday, Friday and Saturday morning hours.
And Stephen Rosales, another volunteer who’s interim executive director of the Sequim Food Bank, likewise wants to make sure that anyone without a car still has access to nutritious meals.
Together, Fitzpatrick and Rosales are reaching out to homebound seniors and other shut-ins and offering to deliver the basics: eggs, milk, flour, rice and beans, peanut butter, tomato sauce, oats, ground turkey or turkey franks, tuna, potatoes and corn.
“This is important to me,” Fitzpatrick said. “I’ve had friends who’ve gone without,” so she’s brought them food.
She also knows of seniors whose Social Security benefits cover rent, utilities and medication and not much else.
To request delivery to homebound Sequim-area residents, phone the food bank at 360-683-1205.
Meantime, Rosales, a longtime food bank volunteer, has striven to expand the pantry’s provisions, as the numbers of clients have grown.
Now Rosales is planning a prodigious pre-Christmas distribution of turkeys with all of the trimmings, plus other goods such as milk and bread.
This year, Sequim’s Albert Haller Foundation and the Mary P. Dolciani Halloran Foundation contributed a total of $23,000 for the food bank’s Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner giveaways, Rosales noted. Since the volunteer crew provided baskets for 900 households before Thanksgiving, Rosales is expecting the Christmas numbers to be the same or higher.
The Christmas-dinner-and-then-some baskets will be distributed over four days: Dec. 18-19 and 21-22.
The food bank will be open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on each of those days, and on Dec. 19, Santa Claus will be on hand.
Rosales said he would have liked to be Santa, but he ceded that role to Sequim school-bus driver George Stuber, since “he has a better ho-ho-ho than I do.”
And as he has done in past years, Rosales promised to be the bringer of Christmas dinner to those who find themselves without it on Dec. 25. He will be on call at 360-461-6038.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
