“Change is the only constant in life”, some old Greek philosopher noted, so this year’s food drive was under a new leadership team (Lions Claire and Jen, with Lion John assisting and providing logistics for Monday) with a few changes compared to events in the past 37 years, but the constant was the very successful outcome. Kudos to all who participated!

Instead of covering two Lucky stores (one at El Paseo, one on Lawrence Square), the intrepid ladies at the helm added a Lunardi’s market in Los Gatos. Despite some concerns about having enough volunteers, things worked out, as they often do, with a bit of scrambling and last minute actions, but ….they worked out just fine.

What started as a very cool Saturday morning, turned into an unseasonably warm day and with the sun, people warmed up to the idea of giving. Many fellow club members, assisted by LEOs of Monta Vista High School, volunteers who had followed an appeal on “Nextdoor” plus a range of kids stood at the store fronts and handed out shopping lists to clients, asking for contributions, however small, to our food baskets. Some shoppers would come out with a full cart, handing us one can or two packets of spaghetti, others took out a few items for themselves and left a full cart for our collection. And yet others came by and put cash in the collection box, most without asking for a receipt.

Lions Herb and Charlie tirelessly made their rounds, continuously driving by all 3 locations, collecting heavy boxes with presorted food items and chauffeured them to the Odd Fellow Lodge in Cupertino where Lions Jen, Carl, Jeff, and Anne as well as Jen’s boyfriend Sean took the morning shift and recounted and distributed the items into 180 of 360 boxes that had been assembled and put up on rows of tables, while Lions Jen and Amy worked the afternoon.

Activities on Sunday were mostly the same, with plenty of donations coming in, again delivered by Lions Herb and Charlie. Lion Jen, assisted by Sean, had a close eye on the mix of donated goods and after texting the most pressing needs to people at the stores, all boxes were filled equally, even with extra cans of veggies, pasta and more, so nothing had to be bought.

On Monday morning, at 6:00am (Lion Herb was already there – bravo!), the perishables were delivered by Lion Mike Martin in a refrigerated truck, offloaded mainly by Lions Scott and Jeff and distributed into the complementary boxes – mostly good size and therefore heavy turkeys together with milk, butter and eggs. A special mention and kudos are in order for Lion Ray who was working on all 3 days, helped with the set up, got carts from Home Depot, drove to San Leandro to get the refrigerated truck on Saturday and took over shifts when no other volunteer was available.

With about 20 Lions present (among them 2 new club members – Lions Joan and Liang) the boxes were quickly filled. They were heavy!!! But everybody helped to carry those 360 boxes outside, where they were loaded by destination onto a number of trucks and SUVs – and it was all done by 8:00am! While Lion Don started mopping the floor in the hall and made sure the tables and chairs were arranged in the required order, Lion Bill took a truck full of surplus items to the Sunnyvale Community Center. Lions Mike and Herb drove off in the Refer truck and Lions Al, Kent, John, Mary, Liang and former lions Dan and Yvonne Fimby helped with hauling away smaller quantities of boxes.

As usual the recipients of the boxes were already waiting anxiously for the deliveries and helped with offloading. They were more than grateful.

This year we could help a record 167 families in the community with 2 food boxes each, which should provide them with a scrumptious Thanksgiving meal and food for the week to come.

This project is one of the cornerstones of our club’s service work.

A big hand and major thanks are due to Jen, Claire & John for the overall organization and to Lion Ray who did a lot of liaising. Thanks to all fellow lions and their partners and friends (some more visible than others) and to all other volunteers, the LEOs of Monta Vista High, and of course the store managers at the Lucky Stores as well as Lunardi’s Market for allowing us to stage the food drive at their front doors.