Hundreds are served at Saint Andrew Food Pantry

RIVERTON —The Saint Andrew Parish Food Pantry fed 941 people this month, which is 207 families.

"We couldn’t provide for this mostly Hispanic population without our volunteers," said Mary Ann Garcia, co-coordinator of the food pantry and St. Andrew parishioner. "We have youth earning service hours for confirmation or community service, and Latter-day Saints youth from the neighborhood helping, St. Andrew parishioners helping as well as volunteers from Christ the King Lutheran Church as joint partners."

The food pantry came about when both the Catholic and Lutheran parishes were holding services at a movie theater while they were building churches, said Jess Smoyer from Christ the King Lutheran Church. "We wanted to perform community service together, so Fr. (Francisco) Pires suggested the Food Bank. We serve people in West and South Jordan, Riverton, Herriman and Draper."

"St. Andrew Food Pantry came at the right time to help the needy of our parish and surrounding communities," said Fr. Pires, pastor of St. Andrew. "With so many people struggling to put food on their table due to job losses, we have been able to alleviate their burden by providing some of the basics. The pantry has shown the true Christian spirit of our parish community."

The pantry has only been in operation since Easter of 2009. Garcia and co-coordinator Mary Jane Smith, a St. Andrew parishioner, began the project when Smith realized people were in need of food. "We started a food drive at the parish, but realized we needed more," said Garcia. "We started shopping sales, but our needs kept growing and shopping became too expensive. So we approached the Utah Food Bank for assistance."

Each week the pantry picks up four pallets of food from the Food Bank. They receive bread on Tuesdays and canned goods, cereal, rice, pasta and cold and frozen foods from the Food Bank on Wednesday. The pantry is open on Thursday from 5 to 7 p.m. In addition they receive weekly donations from the Pizza Hut, the Riverton Starbucks, the Olive Garden and Azteca Distributors, which donates tortillas, bread, chips, and Mexican candies, Garcia said.

"We have grown so much that we now have officers," said Garcia. "Jess is our bookkeeper, Mary Jane does logistics, Julie Krushensky, Jose Garcia, Ramon Garcia and the youth help sort and carry out food, Vivian Rich is fluent in Spanish and checks people in to receive food, Bill Rich picks up the food from the Food Bank, and I recruit volunteers."

The pantry, which is located in Fr. Pires’ basement, needs to find a new location because they have outgrown the current site, Garcia said.

"We only have a freezer and two refrigerators, so we are limited as to what we can give. We would like to add items such as eggs and yogurt, and we need more storage space."

Garcia said she has a copy machine and file cabinets she would like to donate to the new space, but they will need chairs because the chairs they are using belong to the parish. They have to purchase plastic bags and paper sacks in which they put the food so they will have to start holding fundraisers to make ends meet.

"The greatness of this food bank and our church is that we are so integrated between the Spanish and English cultures," said Bill Rich. "We mingle well together and we are all friends."