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Volunteer Dorothy Miller helps Anival Otero, 23, navigate his first visit to the Middlebury Food Pantry in Middlebury.
Anival Otero, 23, arrives at the Middlebury Community Food Pantry after running out of options. He drove the 30 miles from Goshen, Ind., after hitting the limit imposed by his local pantry. Nearly all of his $900 July unemployment check - half of what he used to make before being laid off last year by Monaco Trailers - went to bills. He had little left over to feed his three children, ages 2, 3 and 5.
At this pantry, which doesn’t set limits or turn away families, Otero gets the help he needs: $60 worth of groceries, including macaroni and cheese, fresh vegetables and cereal, and vouchers for milk, margarine and eggs to be redeemed at Fork’s County Line Store.
More people from further away are turning to the Middlebury Community Food Pantry, part of the town’s First Mennonite Church. A week before Otero arrived, the pantry set a record, feeding 163 families or a total of 571 people, over a seven-day period.
The volume of visitors has been steadily increasing since last fall when pantry volunteers were accustomed to an average of a dozen families, many of them familiar faces.
"When my pastor first asked me to take over, I had no idea it was going to be like this," says Pam Bingaman, Middlebury's Food Pantry director. "It has just exploded."
The new families standing in line in July were largely Latino families from Goshen, some with eight children in tow, she says. However, throughout the year, first-timers to the pantry have been pouring in from all walks of life, climbing steadily since January, Bingaman says.
On average, 90 percent of those coming to the pantry report being unemployed. Bingaman lost her job as a house inspector last September, just two weeks after she agreed to take over the community pantry's operations, which relies exclusively on volunteers.
"Now it's families who worked their whole lives and weren’t ready for this and their pride wouldn't let them come in here until they had been without for a very long time," she says.
Part of the reason for the increase in traffic is the pantry's own change of policy. In December, Bingaman rounded up the representatives from the eight local churches supporting the pantry to review an unwritten rule that had set a limit on 15 items per family, three times a year. That limit had been in place since the pantry's opening in the 1980s.
In spite of concerns that there might be some who would take advantage of the new policy, Bingaman says everyone at the meeting agreed to not turn families away. "If we have it," she says, "let's share it."
To keep up with the growing demand, the pantry needs to raise $10,000 each month in addition to food donations. The problem is, from time to time, the pantry comes up short.
In the last two newsletters, in bold, red type, the pantry spelled it out: "We are completely out of the following item: CASH." Just three weeks ago, the pantry needed $2,500 to cover expenses, says Bingaman.
So far, help seems to arrive just as it's needed most, Bingaman says. The Middlebury Summer Festival chose the pantry as its cause, and recently, three cows and three pigs were promised from people at the Elkhart County 4-H Fair.
The donations couldn't come at a better time for newcomer Carol Laurette, 61, a retired nurse who lives with her 20-year-grandson, his girlfriend and son in Edwardsburg, Mich. Her son, who works as a receiver in the car industry, is the only person in the house who holds a job, she says.
"They laid people off last Friday and they're going to lay some people off this Friday - he might be next," she says. "I could really use the help."
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