Erica chatted this morning with Kellie Lewis, a superwoman from the Edmonds Food Bank. With the recent icy temps, the need for food assistance has skyrocketed. But, wait for it, Kellie shares a feel-good tale of a family that went above and beyond by gathering over 500 paper bags for the food bank to use! When serving 1000 families in one week, you go through bags fast, so this was a huge gift of time from Stephanie Westling, her kids Olivia and Winter, AND the community who donated the bags.
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TRANSCRIPTION:
Erica:
Hi, Kellie. It’s Erica at SPIRIT 105.3. How are you?
Kellie Lewis:
Hi, Erica. Good. How are you doing?
Erica:
I’m great. I’m sorry I missed your call. I was probably making a piece of toast.
Kellie Lewis:
I appreciate just the honesty about that.
Erica:
You get it right. I do. I love it. Let’s make it official. Kellie from the Edmonds Food Bank. Welcome to SPIRIT 105.3. Are you staying warm?
Kellie Lewis:
Thank you. We are trying. We all bundled up here at the food bank distributing food, and it is very cold.
Erica:
Yeah, it kind of goes right through you, this cold. I imagine there is a great need right now with the temps as cold as they’ve been, and families struggling as they are.
Kellie Lewis:
Absolutely. Yeah. We’re providing groceries for almost a thousand families every week right now.
Erica:
Wow. When these families come in and you give them groceries, Kellie, what do you see on their faces?
Kellie Lewis:
A lot of relief. They interact right away with our volunteers, and our volunteers continuously get so much positive feedback for how kind they are. So many of our volunteers are warm and kind and welcome anyone that walks through the door and is in need of food. And yes, their faces are relief, gratitude, thankfulness…
Erica:
All of it. I bet. I know you had a unique problem over the weekend. You were running out of grocery bags and there was a family that really stepped up, and what they did really honestly just blew me away, and I’m hoping you’ll share their story.
Kellie Lewis:
Absolutely. Yeah, from time to time, we need more grocery bags. It is something that we can purchase, but we don’t love to purchase it because it takes away from us being able to purchase food. So, when we can ask our community to come through and bring bags for us, we do that when we can. So, this weekend we put out an all call and said, we need bags, we need paper, grocery bags. Every family gets about two bags, so if we’re serving a thousand families, that’s a lot of bags we go through. We put it out on Facebook, on Instagram, and a number of people saw it. One mom saw it and rallied her daughters on Martin Luther King Day in order to honor the legacy of Dr. King, and they went and collected bags from neighbors and they collected over 500 bags. Olivia and Winter, they packed their car and they were driving around. People were sending them their addresses on Facebook saying, we have some. We have some. And they were driving around packing their car, and they brought all the bags to the food bank yesterday, and we were just in awe.
Erica:
This story is so heartwarming. Kellie, how did you all feel when these kids rolled up? I’m guessing you had to make many trips to get all these bags.
Kellie Lewis:
It took many trips. A number of our volunteers went out to help and everyone was, we kind of knew they were coming, which was exciting. We saw on social media, “Oh, they’re driving around collecting bags. When are they going to be here!” They’re going to be here soon. But we were kind of excited to meet them. They were little celebrities.
Erica:
Yeah, forget following celebrities on social media. Follow Winter, and Olivia, as far as I’m concerned.
Kellie Lewis:
We don’t need celebs anymore. Winter and Olivia are going to save us. Yeah, they were amazing. They popped right out and brought all their bags, and we were all incredibly grateful. It really does make a huge, huge difference.
Erica:
Oh, Kellie from the Edmonds Food Bank, thank you so much for calling in. I know you’re battling bronchitis right now, so this means a lot. You rest up and keep connected with me. Anytime something happens, let me know.
Kellie Lewis:
Thank you. We appreciate your time.
Erica:
Listen, thank YOU for catching the spirit every day in Edmonds.
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