Share the Harvest remains in limbo

Share the Harvest remains in limbo

Jan. 4, 2001

By Janelle Holden
Journal Staff Writer

Although Montezuma County remains one of the poorest in the state — ranked 48th out of 63 by the U.S. Census Bureau — its county seat’s food-relief venues have recently suffered a setback.

Cortez’s Share the Harvest, a food-bank program operating for the past 18 months from a home on Twenty Mule Team Drive, will remain closed through the winter months, unless significant charitable support comes to its rescue.

The former state directors of Share the Harvest, Greg and Judy Fedler of Delta, violated IRS and Food Bank of the Rockies guidelines by asking participants to contribute a $15 donation to cover shipping and maintenance costs required by their distributor, the Food Bank of the Rockies, in Denver.

The guidelines stipulate that contributions from participants be "truly voluntary and anonymous."

Since the Fedlers were asked to step down in December, the Food Bank of the Rockies has shut down its normal shipments to Cortez.

Without charitable benefactors or the previously required donation, the program could no longer afford to have food shipped here.

Originally, the Fedlers helped get approval for a Cortez Share the Harvest program, even though Colorado Springs’ Care and Share food bank, which serves the 31 counties in the southern half of the state, was technically responsible. Both are subsidiaries of the America’s Second Harvest Food Bank, based out of Chicago.

Rick Rank, the CEO and president of Food Bank of the Rockies, said that the Colorado Springs branch would like to continue distributing food to the Cortez area if charitable benefactors could pay the requisite shipping and handling costs.

The Good Samaritan Center, now the sole food-relief agency in Cortez, used to participate in Care and Share until last year.

Cindy Irvin, the center’s director, said Care and Share’s food was shipped to Alamosa, where a Good Samaritan driver would pick up the goods to bring back to Cortez for distribution.

Irvin explained that Care and Share would ship the food to Alamosa for free if the Good Samaritans ordered over 2,000 pounds, but they had to find a way to have it shipped from Alamosa to Cortez.

Care and Share said they normally charge 85 cents a pound for any food ordered.

After an accident occurred involving both the driver of the Good Samaritan truck and trailer and the Care and Share distributor last year in Alamosa, Good Samaritan began to buy food from local grocers.

"It’s a blessing the food they give," Irvin admitted.

Currently, the Good Samaritan Center makes up free sacks of food to feed four people for six days. The center is open five days a week from noon to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Funded by local churches, the city, and the county, the Good Samaritan Center distributed $4,445 worth of food in December alone.

"Nobody pays a thing," explained Irvin. "God gives it to us free; we give it free."

However, Irvin cautioned that center does ask prospective participants about their income and rent, although no proof is required.

"Sometime we have people come in who drive a fancy car and have a cell phone but just can’t make it that month, and dang if they don’t have any food. I call that ‘people in a pickle’," Irvin said.

Irvin recommended Share the Harvest to some of her clients, and bought a box of food to explain what the program had to offer.

"Of course, there were some things in there you wouldn’t use up in years," she explained — like a half-gallon of Kikkoman garlic soy sauce, but it was "a good program."

"There’s a lot of people who don’t want to take anything for free, so that’s why they would go over there — especially the elderly."

Judy Fedler has concerns about the prideful poor as well.

"My first husband died in the ’70s and I sacrificed my children’s needs because I wouldn’t go down to social services to ask for help, and I can’t believe that I’m the only one in the world to do that."

Darlene Griffin, former director of Cortez’s Share the Harvest program, said the community of Cortez will suffer because of the program’s closure. "Lots of unfortunate people are not going to get any food," she warned. "Cortez has more needy than what is classified as needy."

Griffin estimated she distributed 1,200 boxes a month last winter, and 625 this October — which demonstrates a need.

"We didn’t come to Cortez," said Judy Fedler. "Cortez came to us because they had a need, since there was a need — and a dramatic need, we chose to go there."

The Fedlers said it cost the Delta Ministerial Association $188,000 to buy donated food from the Food Bank of the Rockies in 2000. "If contributions were not solicitied, receipts fell below the amount necessary to sustain the program," explained the Fedlers in a letter to the Journal.

In Dec. the Fedlers met with Rank and asked him to accept donations made anonymously and deposited in an account for the food bank at the Olathe State Bank in Delta. Rank had previously told the Fedlers that he would help them out by researching venues for grants to pay for the food distribution.

According to the Fedlers, Rank never followed through with his promises and if the food bank did not get paid, all distributions ceased. Any shortfall was made up by the Fedlers and the Delta County Ministerial Fellowship, but Judy Fedler said that asking churches to donate all of that money in such a "depressed area" was too burdensome.

The Fedlers said they are continuing to distribute food, but are no longer involved with Share the Harvest.

"He sacrificed us," Fedler explained. "They were too big, and we were too small."

Rank admitted that Share the Harvest’s $15 donation was sacrificed for the sake of the program at large. "I really have to protect the other 900 agencies that feed hundreds of thousands of people," he said.

Share the Harvest did not require participants to give out personal information, prompting critics to question whether the needy were truly being served. According to the Fedlers, the food-bank guidelines stipulated that any family of four with a gross annual income of $31,500 or less was eligible to participate in the program, although no participant was ever required to submit income-tax statements.

Judy Fedler said that Delta County is so depressed, it would be hard to find many families who make over $30,000 a year.

Rank said that with the help of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and the Colorado Department of Agriculture, the Food Bank of the Rockies will be distributing 1,200 free boxes of food from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Mormon church in Delta this Friday.

"I don’t know how long we can do this. I’m hoping to do this at least the three winter months ahead of us," Rank predicted.