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Big donation brings Eagle County community together

Tsu Wolin-Brown
Special to the Daily
Vail, CO Colorado

EAGLE COUNTY, Colorado – Eagle County Health and Human Services had a grant that they weren’t going to be able to spend by Sept. 30, so they asked permission from the state to help local food programs.

The state agreed just last Tuesday and I suggested they contact United Methodist Church, Trinity Church and the Eagle River Presbyterian Church, all of whom do community suppers – we send a lot of our homeless clients to these hot meals.

Kathy Lyons and Rita Woods of Eagle County Health and Human Services did a huge amount of work ordering food for all of us.



On top of what they spent on the community suppers, they donated approximately $45,000 to our food pantries and for goodies for our Thanksgiving and Christmas food baskets.

The pantries are frequently depleted, since we now have between 200 to 300 food pantry visits per month. We have spent almost $90,000 since Oct. 1, 2009, on food.

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How in the world do we transport this enormous quantity of food, and where do we store it?

Vail Valley Cares loaned us the Thrifty Shoppe trucks to transport. They are guardian angels to the Salvation Army, giving us Thrifty Shoppe store cards, transporting food and other items, donating things we need, and organizing other things for us. They were short a driver, so I was able to ask Marnie and Doug Pistole from Vail Transportation Services to load the truck and transport.

But where to put it all?

Magnus Lindholm of Traer Creek had already agreed to give us a storefront for our Holiday Cabin, as a donation. He was able to jump through hoops to clear out the space and allow us to use it for the food storage early.

By the time we got there, he had a worker painting the walls and clearing out the space.

Julie Corcoran, the amazing volunteer who organizes and orders for our Edwards food pantry, was able to call on Eagle Ranch, and they had a wonderful worker, Jerry Glissman, who came and stayed past the workday both days to help.

City Market in Avon loaned us a pallet lift, as did Beaver Creek Golf Course.

Mark Clark, Michael Irvine, Jerry Glissman, Suzanne Sloan, Julie Corcoran, Marnie and Doug Pistole all helped unload the food.

Dale Pistole and Alex Wilson (Stone Creek Charter students) ran errands such as buying water for the crew.

We will probably need more helpers next week for the final load, but it was miraculous the way the entire community came together to help us accept this tremendous donation.

Tsu Wolin-Brown is director of the Vail Valley Salvation Army.


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