By Joel Langton
The 830 Times
Instead of delivering the mail Tuesday morning, Del Rio’s postal carriers handed over nearly three tons of food they’d collected Saturday, as they worked to stamp out hunger.
Each year, letter carriers across the country head out on their routes on the second Saturday in May to collect donations of non-perishable food items to benefit local food pantries.
The event is driven by the National Association of Letter Carriers
and the local carriers are members of Branch 2511.
Last week, carriers dropped off a brown paper bag asking residents to “bag healthy non-perishable food and place it by the mailbox for letter carrier delivery to local food banks and pantries.”
Del Rio residents stepped up, filling 15 hampers full of groceries, an estimated 3,200 pounds, said John Bejarano, local branch 2511 union vice president. In 2023, the organization picked up more than 43 million pounds of food, according to the event’s verified Facebook page.
“We have everything from rice to beans to baby food,” said Adrian Gomez, local branch 2511 union steward.
Thirty-eight carriers participated in the event and several local churches and charities were on hand Tuesday morning to grab grub for families they help.
“We work really hard to make this easy for people,” said Bejerano. “We drop the bag off, all the residents have to do is fill it up and set it out in the morning and we deliver.”
“This will help us feed lots of families and homeless that come by,” said Madison Reid, Esperanza First Baptist Church secretary. “We support about 100 families and homeless that come by our church looking for food, and this will help us make sure we can take care of them.”
The writer can be reached at JoelALangton@gmail.com .
