Krista Lucchesi stands outside the new Mercy Brown Bag food truck April 4 at Oakland’s Mercy Retirement and Care Center in Califorina. (CNS photo/Carrie McClish, Catholic Voice)
By Carrie McClish Catholic News Service
OAKLAND, Calif. — A new shiny truck is bringing food to senior citizens in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood and nearby communities.
A year in the making, the Mercy Brown Bag Program has expanded, with the truck visiting several locales and offering assistance to seniors faced with the high cost of rent and medication.
Krista Lucchesi, director of the program that is part of the services of the Mercy Retirement and Care Center, couldn’t stop smiling as she looked at the vehicle parked behind the residential care facility.
Having the truck “now is kind of amazing for all of us,” she told The Catholic Voice, newspaper of the Oakland Diocese.
Staff and volunteers cheered the truck as it arrived April 2 after a cross-country trip from St. Louis, where it was built. Nicole St. Lawrence, Mercy Brown Bag’s assistant director, brought the truck west on a mission to help stem the tide of senior hunger in Alameda County.
Most recipients enrolled in the Mercy Brown Bag Program have an average yearly income of less than $12,000 in a county where the annual median income is $82,000. Average rent for a one-bedroom apartment is about $1,663 a month, Lucchesi said. In such a costly environment, many seniors must make difficult choices about buying food, medication or shelter in order to survive.
“Healthy food is usually the first thing they will give up,” Lucchesi said.
That’s where the Mercy Brown Bag Program comes in. The program delivers food to 5,000 seniors at 17 sites and through 45 social service providers. Most of the food that the program distributes comes from the Alameda County Community Food Bank.
Each registered person can take home up to 20 pounds of groceries. Much of the food from a variety of food groups can be considered senior-appropriate: low in sodium and easy to chew.
Fresh produce makes up the majority of the food delivered.
