National Guard and FIND Food Bank team up to distribute food to over two thousand people in La Quinta

The California National Guard continues to help the Desert’s Regional Food Bank to make sure no one gets left behind as we face the coronavirus pandemic.

News Channel 3’s Caitlin Thropay was out at FIND Food Bank’s distribution Saturday morning to see how the need for food continues to grow.

It was a very well-organized food distribution in La Quinta, as National Guard troops helped pass out food from FIND Food Bank to those in need.

“We’re out here helping, assisting our community per the Governor’s orders really just trying to help distribute food to the communities,” Staff Sergeant Joshua Hodges told News Channel 3.

“I can go without food but I’m not going to let my wife or daughter go without food,” Richard Clemens said while waiting in line for food.

The reality of food insecurity is growing after many people lose their job due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“I have four kids and I’m a single parent so it’s very important because it’s been the main factor of my worries about providing for my kids now that I don’t have a job,” Aurora Franco told News Channel 3

Members of our community share how grateful they are to rely on food from FIND during this uncertain time.

“It’s like really hard to find even beans or rice at the grocery store, it’s really hard and I know some people it’s really needed so it means a lot for find to do this,” Cesar Barraza said.

FIND Food Bank president, Debbie Espinosa was out at the site making sure the walk-up site was safe and efficient while practicing social distancing.

“Another interesting thing we’ve done to change our sites around is you can see with social distancing we’ve done registration stations that are highly coordinated with the cones to give people visual cues of where they need to stand apart from each other,” she said.

This site in La Quinta typically serves 100 households.

“We’ve already served over 300 families in two hours and we still have another two hours to go,” Espinosa said.

By the end of the day they saw 479 families that totaled over 2,000 people who came through to get food from FIND Food Bank at this distribution site.

You can learn about the next food distribution on FIND’s website: http://findfoodbank.org./