Wrangell’s Salvation Army Food Pantry volunteers are busy stocking shelves with recently donated food from community members on a Tuesday in early November, just a few days after the federal government stopped Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits and a month into the government shutdown. SNAP is a federal program that helps low-income households pay for groceries.
“Right now, our customers are looking for food, so that’s what we’re doing right now,” volunteer Marit Stevens said. “Normally it’s pretty well organized.”
When they started stocking, the shelves were unusually empty. The church’s Captain Chase Tomberlin-Green said they rely on food from the United States Department of Agriculture, which stopped supplying the food bank earlier last month because of the shutdown.
He said, “It’s impacted not just tons of families here in our community, but also our ability to maintain the food pantry.”
He said the Salvation Army Food Pantry is the only official food bank in Wrangell. Approximately 2,000 people make up the community and Tomberlin-Green said there’s a recent increase in need. It nearly doubled from 40 to 75 households needing food every week.
“It’s a pretty drastic change, and we’ll definitely see that throughout this week,” Tomberlin-Green said. “I’m sure there will be a large influx.”
Based on the Census data from 2022, 10.5% of Wrangellites rely on SNAP benefits.
At a local grocery store
At City Market, a scanner beeps as it scans groceries. Cashier Tom Soeurt said he’s already seen an impact. He said one woman who was trying to pay about $50 with her benefits card was declined at checkout.
“[She] Just came through, and it just says, ‘Funds not available,'” he said. “So even though she claimed close to $250, there wasn’t anything on it.”
Along with the local food pantry (that’s been asking for donations since the government shutdown), other Wrangell residents banded together and came up with solutions to help community members who rely on the federal benefits.
Wrangellite Vivian Faith Prescott schemed up a way to help her fellow neighbors.
A day after the cut began, she’s distributing boxes of donated food from a couple cars parked along the waterfront downtown. There are more donated goods on a bench nearby. She calls this popup the Good Neighbors Little Free Bakery.
“I just named it Good Neighbors, because I want to be a good neighbor and to help out because of the shutdown of the SNAP funds,” Prescott said while a man thanked her for helping.
She’s baked various goods, including spruce tip flatbread and garlic ricotta naan. And there were donations of apples, milk, peanut butter, eggs, cheese and bread.
“It’s happened more than once to me.”
The local bakeries, Sweet Tides and Clearwater Bakery, also contributed, offering Halloween cookies, cheesecakes, soups and sandwiches.
Krysta Gillen walked through the popup with her daughter. She praised the grassroots popup, highlighting the struggle of many during the government shutdown.
“Me being a single mother of three small kids, I have been struggling and with losing food stamps benefits during the holidays. It’s happened more than once to me,” she said. “I think this is amazing, and it’s great to see Wrangell come together like this.”
Later, Prescott said about 20 Wrangellites stopped by for the baked goods. She said some have big families and at least one visitor was a furloughed worker.
Local restaurant offers meals
All leftovers from the popup were donated to the Salvation Army Food Bank.
It wasn’t just the grassroots popup that took action as well. One of Wrangell’s 10 restaurants, Wolf Shack, which specializes in comfort food – Mexican and American – posted on Facebook letting people know they would feed those affected by the government shutdown.
“I think people getting ready for the holidays and trying to figure out…I mean, this is just one meal,” Alisha Mora said. She owns the restaurant with her husband, Chris Miera. “People eat three times a day, mostly. This is just a portion.”
“If people have a family, it’s more,” Miera responded.
As of Monday, they estimated they’d given out about 20 meals, with a choice between a hamburger and fries or chicken nuggets and fries.
“This is the first time that we’ve had a place in our lives where we can give back.”
Mora said what prompted them to take action was when they saw comments on social media about the SNAP cut-offs and when many people said they rely on the federal aid, she knew they had to do something.
“This is something that is to heart to us, because we’ve struggled,” she said. “Chris and I both came from kind of poor families, and we’ve always kind of been on this end of the thing. This is the first time that we’ve had a place in our lives where we can give back.”
The restaurant has raised around $1,000 in donations from other community members so far. Mora said when the government reopens and SNAP benefits are back, they’ll either donate the rest of the money to a good cause or return it.
As the shutdown’s effects unfold in the island town, so is the community’s generosity, one meal at a time.
