Successful Food Drive Will Put Thanksgiving Dinner on for 150 Families

The DeAnza Lions had another successful food drive in spite of having to change the collections to two new grocery stores. After initial concerns we not only achieved our goal of directly providing food to 120 needy families, but we could include 30 additional families from our wait list.

Many of our other donations go to charities where we are one of many contributors, but at Thanksgiving, the DeAnza Lions club is the only provider to these local families. 

For two days, teams of Lions and LEOs collected food and cash at 2 Lucky’s store locations, while another team delivered the food collection to the Odd Fellows Lodge in Cupertino where yet another group started to sort food donations into 2 boxes per family. Final packing started at 6:00am on Monday morning, with all deliveries completed by 2:00pm. Recipients this year included families connected to Trace Elementary school, “Even Start Family Learning Center”, Hughes Elementary school, Domestic Violence Department, Young Parent Program FUHS and the Horizon Program. Excess food in the amount of approx. $ 1,500.00 went to Sunnyvale Community Services.

The DeAnza Lions want to express their gratitude to Lucky’s Grocery stores in Santa Clara and San Jose, to the community, the fellow lions with families and friends as well as the LEOs of Monta Vista and Lynbrook High Schools for making our Annual Thanksgiving food drive this past weekend a big success. Special thanks go to Santa Clara Store manager Jeff Kennedy, Asst. Mgr. Liz Coelho, and Head Checker Valerie Ruis, as well as to El Paseo Store manager Chris Miner, Tony Gonzalez, and Jessica Pusich for allowing us to have our drive at their respective location and for going above and beyond the call of duty – without them the event would not have happened.
Sean (spelling?) from the MV LEO club did a full shift from 9am to 5pm on both days, Saturday & Sunday – hats off, and many thanks and appreciation for this outstanding contribution. The DeAnza lions also thank the Odd Fellows for donating the use of their meeting hall.

A big Thank You again to the patrons of the Lucky Stores for opening their heart and wallets to help people in need. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Contributed by Lion Ray Lancon