Local church members hold donation drive for TSA agents
Some local church members are doing their part to help, TSA agents at the Palm Springs International Airport working without paychecks.
Bulk items are being brought in to the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Desert, piled on a table, ready to be given away as part of a donation drive for TSA agents. They’re working without paychecks due to the government shutdown. Church member Joni Padduck says she feels for the workers…
“We can’t imagine missing one of our social security checks. It would be really difficult, so that’s what really spurred the idea to help,” she said.
{“url”:”https://twitter.com/JeremyChenKESQ/status/1088201456652558336″,”author_name”:”Jeremy Chen”,”author_url”:”https://twitter.com/JeremyChenKESQ”,”html”:”&#lt;blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”&#gt;&#lt;p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”&#gt;Members of the Unitarian Universalists Church of the Desert in &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/RanchoMirage?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;#RanchoMirage&#lt;/a&#gt; held a donation drive today for local TSA agents who are working without a paycheck. Full story on how they’re helping coming up tonight at 5 on &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/KESQ?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;@KESQ&#lt;/a&#gt;. &#lt;a href=”https://t.co/d4UGVg64cy”&#gt;pic.twitter.com/d4UGVg64cy&#lt;/a&#gt;&#lt;/p&#gt;– Jeremy Chen (@JeremyChenKESQ) &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/JeremyChenKESQ/status/1088201456652558336?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;January 23, 2019&#lt;/a&#gt;&#lt;/blockquote&#gt;n&#lt;script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″&#gt;&#lt;/script&#gt;n”,”width”:550,”height”:null,”type”:”rich”,”cache_age”:”3153600000″,”provider_name”:”Twitter”,”provider_url”:”https://twitter.com”,”version”:”1.0″}
Padduck got support from other church members and gathered over 100 pounds of toiletries and non perishable goods, enough for the approximately 100 TSA employees at the palm springs international airport. It’s a sense of duty she’s proud to see.
“Anytime there is a need, whether it’s a need in the congregation or outside the congregation. If a couple of people step up, the generosity is unending,” she said.
Phillip Moore, another church member understands the pain of missing a paycheck and says any donation can help.
“Take the sting out of it a little bit and let them know they’re not alone, that there’s a community out here that wants to support them,” he said.
Church members say after this donation drive they’re open to help other federal employees still waiting for their paycheck.
“If we can Identify some other organizations that we can help, the absolutely,” Padduck said.
About a thousand dollars in cash and gas cards were also donated. Everything will be given to the TSA agents at the airport Thursday afternoon.
