It is Friday morning at the Issaquah Food and Clothing Bank and the shelves are looking pretty empty. For Executive Director Cori Walters, it means she’s doing her job.
Each day, Monday through Thursday, more than 100 households in Issaquah and Sammamish will find the food and clothing they need to survive. Though many people see the communities as affluent suburbs, Walters knows better.
“We live in a community where social/economic life is very diverse,” Walters said. “Many have a lot, but there are people who are truly homeless or couch surfing.”
To help meet the need, approximately 150 community volunteers a week refill the food and clothing bank’s shelves.
At the same time, 27 church and community groups provide a dinner Monday through Friday at the city’s Community Hall. Rounding out the effort to provide life’s necessities are other volunteers who provide lunches throughout the week and dinners on the weekend.
But if the needs seem unending, so, too, are the rewards.
Listen to Marilyn Ottinger.
An Issaquah resident for more than 28 years, she remembers her father dying of a heart attack when she was a teen. Her mother was able to return to work and the family always had food, clothing and shelter.
But others, she discovered, weren’t so fortunate and 6 1/2 years ago, she started volunteering at the food and clothing bank.
“I was amazed at the number of people who came each week for food and clothing and gradually began to know many by name,” she said.
In October of 2007, she and a group of friends set up a card table outside the food bank and began offering soup and sandwiches on Thursday mornings to those who waited in line.
“Eventually, through the kindness of then city councilman, Fred Butler, our lunch moved indoors to the Community Hall,” Ottinger said.
A year later, at the encouragement of a homeless friend, the group added weekend meals. Now, “every day of the week there is a free meal in Issaquah,” Ottinger said. And, what started off behind a table, turned into being at the table “with our guests.”
The weekday dinners are organized by Adria Briehl of Catholic Community Services. Between 150-175 people volunteers put on a full meal for 30-40 people who come each night every month.
“People in the Issaquah/Sammamish community are financially struggling,” Walters said. Of the hundreds who seek food and/or clothing at the facility, 56 percent are children or seniors, “truly, our most vulnerable members of our community.”
Part of the problem is debunking myths surrounding Issaquah. Many people she knows live paycheck to paycheck.
“People think it’s poor budgeting,” Walters said. “But, a lot of people are on a tight budget…one unfortunate incident” away from a calamity.
It could be a car accident, medical issues, loss of a job, or loss of a vehicle, which makes getting to a job essentially impossible.
“This happens all the time,” Walters said. “People are distraught.
She added not everyone has a “safety net” available to them, such as a savings account, mom and dad nearby, a husband or friends who can help.
Briehl said she has talked to people who have worked at Boeing for 20 years and had a medical issue that took away their safety net.
“Everybody’s different,” Briehl said, “you can’t generalize.”
Briehl sees a large number of low-income seniors, who live off Social Security in subsidized housing, at the lunches and weekend dinners
For a lot of them, “This is the only meal they’ll get a day,” Briehl said.
In addition to seniors, there are people with disabilities – physical and mental – lots of families, youths and adults with unstable housing.
“People have a lot of pride,” Walters said, noting that embarrassment makes them wait before they ask for help.
If food is a daily necessity, clothing is right behind.
Because of limited storage, clothing is sought that is seasonally appropriate. And while women’s and children’s items are often donated, there’s not always enough for men and teen boys, Walters said. And those who are homeless need dry clothing and clothes for work.
The clothing bank also stocks cookware, bedding and sheets. And once a month, toiletries are available. What it can’t take are electronics or furniture.
Those showing up for food, clothing and meals often have other unmet needs, Briehl said, such as a job, housing and health care. Getting a job is very difficult if your homeless, she said, and it can take four years to move to the top of the list for subsidized housing.
Despite the seemingly endless effort, Briehl is quick to praise the willingness of people to offer help.
“We really have a compassionate community here,” she said.
Walters remembers how the Issaquah and Sammamish communities stepped up to help the mudslide victims at Oso, filling trucks with food and supplies that the devastated families there would need to survive.
“I couldn’t be more pleased to be in this community,” she said.
“In the process of accompanying others, we discover the ‘gift you can’t wrap in a box’ that we are all connected and have the same longings to be in relationship, feel cared about and know we have something to offer,” Ottinger said, adding that the gift “is liberating and freeing and one that you can’t buy.”
Adria Briehl checks out the refrigerator used by the Meals Program that provides dinners at the Issaquah Community Hall on Monday through Friday.
Craig Groshart, Issaquah & Sammamish Reporter