Edwin Ruano, of Petaluma, doesn’t know how he and his family contracted COVID-19 in late March. “But as soon as we knew that we got it, we called everyone that was close to us the week before, he said. “And then everybody got scared and they all went to (get) tested and they all got positive.”
The coronavirus swept through his family, infecting around 50 family members, he said. “It was crazy, actually.”
Ruano said he and his uncle’s wife became seriously ill and almost went to the hospital, fearing for their lives. “But thank god we’re okay. We survived. We made it, but it was hard because we couldn’t even get out of our house for … I think it was 48 days.”
Living with his wife, who was pregnant at the time, and his daughter, Ruano said he and his wife retested as positive in April and were told to stay home another 28 days. Getting access to food was one of the most difficult challenges of quarantine, he said.
“At the beginning, my mom was trying to bring some food. But then she got infected, too,” Ruano said. He called the United Way of the Wine Country’s 211 information line that connects people to community resources and they referred him to Food for Thought (FFT).
The United Way of the Wine Country also gave Ruano a number to call for rent assistance because by then, he’d lost his job in construction. Ruano said the program helped him make rent for four or five months. FFT’s COVID-19 Nutrition Program made a huge difference under his strange new circumstances.
“They were bringing our food right to the door. We would just open the door, get the food in and close the door, and wait for the next week – eventually, four weeks like that,” he said. “They were awesome with us.”
FFT provided his family groceries for somewhere between six to eight weeks, making an exception for his family because of the number of people infected in his household of around eight, according to Ruano.
He said his family would have survived somehow, but the food bank made a huge difference. “That was a pretty hard time. But they made it easy for us. It wasn’t that hard with their help.”
Ruano recounted how he would receive a call from the food bank a day or two before they’d bring the food with a menu of sorts, letting him choose which foods and fresh vegetables he wanted.
“They would bring us bread, tortillas, a lot of fresh vegetables. Chicken, fish, some meat.” He said volunteers from the food bank also delivered premade food like frozen soups they could heat up, in addition to rice, beans and pasta.
“It was good. I’m telling you, it was the best food. I mean, they gave me better food than the ones that I would buy normally,” he said. “I’m telling you, it was actually fresh fruit and vegetables. Organic, you know?”
Since first becoming infected with COVID-19, Ruano said his family has recovered and his wife gave birth to their newborn son. They were able to head to a grocery store in person with masks and gloves by the end of May, he said.
“We didn’t expect it to be a huge program, but you know, when a whole family is positive, they’re supposed to quarantine and they can’t go to the grocery store, so we just felt like this was a community need that we could help with,” Food for Thought Executive Director Ron Karp said.
The COVID-19 Nutrition Program has served well over a thousand people since the number of infections escalated after May. The local need for resources is also higher now that many people have lost their jobs since the start of the pandemic, Karp said.
“That required us to double the amount of services that we provide. This huge need not just with new clients, but with our existing clients – lots of people were out of work and people were afraid to go to the grocery store, especially in the early days, so the need in June and July was just massive,” he said.
FFT met the challenge by making major changes to its operations, though the outset of the pandemic was a scary time for the nonprofit because it had to let go off all volunteers aged 65 and older who were more vulnerable to the virus, according to Karp. Sending volunteers to stand in line outside grocery stores, exposed to so many other people was out of the question.
“So that and not being able to have our events in the same way, having to go to virtual events, we were kind of looking at a whole lot of additional expenses and much less income, so it was really frightening to start with.”
Things have shifted since then as many donors stepped up with large contributions. FFT was eligible for the federal government payroll protection program and emergency COVID-19 grants from various foundations seeking to help nonprofits stay afloat through the pandemic, Karp said. The food bank has also received a lot of funding from the Sonoma County Emergency Services Department, drawn from its CARES Act relief funds, he said.
“So between the amazing support of our volunteers and the foundations and the government, we were able to have enough money to do what we needed to do this year.” Karp said FFT may not rake in the $160,000 secured at last year’s “Dining Out For Life” fundraiser.
“I don’t think it’ll be quite as successful because we won’t be getting all the donations from the restaurants, but hopefully our donors will respond in a big way and go out to get takeout food and make up the difference for us,” he said.
The executive director reflected on lessons learned from the food bank’s origins. “You know, we started over 30 years ago responding to the AIDS epidemic,” Karp said. “We learned from serving people with HIV that they did much better if they had healthy food, so we really got a lot of expertise doing that and that same thing applies to people with heart conditions and diabetes and many other illnesses that respond to nutritious food.”
He added, “And just like COVID, you get better faster if you are eating well while you’re sick.”
