Hunger challenge has Sen. Peters stuffing holiday food baskets
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It was familiar turf when U.S. Sen. Gary Peters pitched in at a warehouse in Pontiac prepping Thanksgiving food donations for Oakland County’s main social-service agency.
Peters' wife had been a board member of the nonprofit, Pontiac-based Lighthouse when the couple started dating in 1990, she said.
"We dated for four years and I took him to quite a few Lighthouse activities — he didn't have much choice," Colleen Ochoa Peters said with a chuckle, between taking handoffs from her husband, who hefted cartons of Cheerios, chili and other staples, packed ceiling-high in a high-top cargo van. It was a Ford E-Transit, a nearly new electric truck donated by Borg-Warner, a Lighthouse official said.
On Tuesday, the couple was back at Lighthouse. Michigan's junior U.S. senator, his wife and several staff helped fight the region's hunger problem, which agency leaders say has worsened as federal COVID aid runs out and inflation takes its place. This year's goal for Lighthouse was to make its most Thanksgiving food deliveries ever, aiding an estimated 2,000 families in Oakland County and about 200 in Detroit.
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Peters and his wife live in Bloomfield Township, just a few miles from where the couple hefted frozen turkeys. But the gap in incomes from Bloomfield to Pontiac is light years. It grew exponentially, nationwide, after Peters attended Rochester High School in the mid-1970s. Now, inflation is further battering the tight budgets of the poor, Lighthouse CEO Ryan Hertz said.
“The last few years have been a perfect storm of pressure on low-income people” — first with gasoline prices soaring, then rents going up and now food costs rising rapidly, Hertz said. According to the University of Michigan’s Panel Study of Income Dynamics — the nation’s largest and longest-running study of households — researchers in 2021 found that 18.3% of American families reported that they "often" or “sometimes" ran out of food and cash at the same time — up from 15.5% in 2019.
A Lighthouse food bundle for Thanksgiving would sell at retail for about $40, including numerous staples that will outlast the holiday, a turkey and a gallon of milk, warehouse supervisor Russell Estill said. Lighthouse gets some of its food as donations in kind, although it prefers donations of money "because we can buy so much at a discount," Estill said, as the senator, his wife, and his staff member from the Michigan office in downtown Pontiac switched to breaking down shipments and sorting them into the family-size bundles. A day earlier, a new restaurant opened 10 miles south in Birmingham with an entree for bone-in short rib: a la carte, $58.
"I've been blessed to represent Pontiac for many years," Peters said, as he took a break for media questions. "When I run into people, a lot of them mention that Lighthouse at some point helped their family," he said.
Those who'd like to help should visit websites: LighthouseMi.org for Lighthouse in Pontiac; GCFB.org for Gleaners Community Food Bank in Detroit.
As TV cameras and photographers dispersed to meet deadlines, the senator in blue jeans and a fleece vest posed for selfies with Lighthouse employees. Keeping the food moving, however, were volunteers like Mark Goldman of Clarkston, a retired special-ed teacher who shows up twice a week — year-round — with his extended cab pickup.
"I have eight different deliveries today, all in Pontiac," Goldman said. "And he pays for his own gas," called out volunteer Dennis Blender. As Goldman drove off, the last reporter to leave the scene passed the warehouse loading dock. There was Peters, back inside the Ford van, now working without help or an audience.
"I think Colleen's back sorting food somewhere. We said we'd work two hours," Peters said.
He put down a carton of food, stood up inside the tall van and smiled as he said: "We're definitely getting this truck unloaded."
Contact Bill Laitner: blaitner@freepress.com
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Sen. Gary Peters, Pontiac nonprofit help needy for Thanksgiving
