Organized by the National Letter Carriers Association and other agencies nationwide , Saturday's drive helps local food banks re-stock their pantries for the summer when the demand for food skyrockets.
Eric Mossman, Orange County coordinator for the event, said the food drive has raised a billion pounds of food nationwide over the last eight years.
"It's simply amazing what one day's work can do to feed millions of people around the country," Mossman said.
In Orange County, Second Harvest Food Bank says demand for food aid has risen 42 percent. About 615,000 people, or 21 percent of Orange County's
population, struggle with hunger. Children and seniors make up 50 percent of the hungry in Orange County.Stamp Out Hunger is the only one-day food drive held simultaneously in almost every city in the country because the food drive itself is tied to mail delivery and pickup, said Paula Miller, Region 1 Food Drive Coordinator for the National Letter Carriers Association. What has made this food drive successful is its simplicity.
"All people have to do is take the bags that are dropped off in their mailbox, fill it with food and leave it next to their mailbox," she said. "Their letter carrier will pick it up. That's how easy it is."
The food is then taken back to the post offices and delivered to local food banks.
"We act as a conduit between our customers and the food banks," Miller said.
On Saturday morning, 53-year-old Steve Neely, a letter carrier for more than 23 years on the same route in Garden Grove, was picking up food donations that were left by the mailboxes.
"A lot of houses I have picked up (food donations) from in the past have moved on due to the economy," he said. "It's amazing how generous people still are."
Stamp Out Hunger is the largest one-day food drive of the year for local food banks, said Lorena Smith, Food Resource Coordinator for the Second Harvest Food Bank in Irvine.
Last year, Second Harvest collected 276,000 pounds of food, distributing supplies to 470 Orange County charities and providing 213,000 meals, Smith said. In Orange County, Second Harvest and the Orange County Food Bank in Garden Grove together received 1 million pounds of food from the Stamp Out Hunger food drive, Smith said.
That's key, because food pantries get hit hard in the summer. Demand shoots up – especially with children unable to access school lunch programs – just when donations are at their lowest.
"Summer is an extremely challenging time for food banks," she says. "Once the holidays are over, the donations drop dramatically. By now, our pantries are empty because we have run out of everything. Even our volunteers don't come because there is no food to sort out."
Mossman says the most satisfying part of coordinating the drive for him is to magically see the pantries of food banks fill up in one day.
"We would start with an empty warehouse and by the end of the day, it would all be stacked with food," he says.
In the process of organizing the drive, he and others meet people in need and see their plight first-hand. Wars, recession and foreclosures have added to people's problems, Mossman says.
"We met this homeless veteran who spoke to us about coming home from the war and not being able to find a job," he says. "These are people who are trying to start their lives again. All they need is just a little bit of help."
Staff photographer Ken Steinhardt contributed to this report.
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