October 27, 2005

SCHOOL SCENEin Almaden Valley

Simonds students send non-perishable lunches
to hurricane victims via local Good Samaritan

By Carol Rosen
Staff Writer

Simonds Elementary students are doing their part in helping victims of Hurricane Katrina. In fact, last week nearly every Simonds student packed lunches, which will be sent to victims in Mississippi.

Some of the children came over to the Chase’s house to help pack the car. Pictured with the 555 lunches are, from left, Kaela Ferrara, Madison Dewing, Lauren Ferrara, Rebekah Hoogerwerf, Emily Hoogerwerf, Katie Gerdt, Michelle Crocker, Gregory Chase, Carl Canteenwala, Samantha Chase, Karly Much, Peter Pecora, Troy Much and Chase Dewing.

When Simonds’ parent Jan Chase read a news story recently about a local Good Samaritan who was helping feed the people who had journeyed to the Gulf Coast to help survivors, she decided to get involved. The Good Samaritan was Nanci Wokas from Saratoga who had joined the Bay Area Chef’s Relief Program. Wokas runs Cooking With Class.

She and her husband, along with three others, originally drove food out to the area devastated by Katrina and cooked for relief workers. “We’d been out there for several days and Rita came in. We made contacts and friends with the police and decided to help out in any way we could.

“One area that was particularly devastated was Hancock County, Miss. We decided we would ask students in our area to pack a lunch so when the students return to school they didn’t have to worry about lunch,” said Wokas.

“When the kids return to school on Nov. 1, many will not have the ability to purchase school lunches. Many of those students are homeless and living in shelters with no means of being able to pack a lunch other than the MRE’s being passed out by the military. Our goal is to provide students with nutritious lunches.”

Together Wokas and Chase made up a list of non-perishable foods for the students to pack. These included granola bars, breakfast bars, juice boxes, fruit cups with plastic spoons, pretzels and goldfish crackers, but no peanuts—because of allergies.

The Wokas’ will return to the Gulf Coast next week bearing 6,000 lunches for misplaced schoolchildren, 555 of the lunches having been put together by Simonds’ students. The others came from schools in Saratoga, Morgan Hill, Gilroy, the Catholic Church and the National Charity League.

“After I read about the program, I called our principal Linda Kakes and asked her if we could do the program and she was quite enthusiastic about it,” said Chase.

“She came to me, and I thought it was a fabulous idea,” said Kakes. “We were overwhelmed by the response. We expected 50 to 100 lunches and it turned out to be 555 lunches out of 610 students. Some of them drew quite elaborate pictures on their lunch bags while others drew games. It was one of the most heart warming things that I’ve seen students do.”

Kakes added the school continues to do other things to help the hurricane victims, like Coins for Katrina, but the lunch idea really seemed to touch a chord with the students.

Not only did the students gather together the non-perishable food and drinks, but they also decorated the lunch bags and some wrote notes and placed them inside the bag, while others wrote notes on the bag. One of the messages really touched Chase. “It said, ‘I’m sorry you had a hurricane and I hope you like the lunch I packed.’”

Because the lunches could only contain non-perishable food, the usual elementary school lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches was taboo. Many of the lunches were packed with goodies such as fruit roll ups, pop tarts and granola bars. Others contained healthier items such as individual, easy open cans of tuna, cheese and crackers, raisins and juice boxes.

The entire Chase family helped with the project. Walter and Gregory Chase load the car along with Roy Much and Rebekah Hoogerwerf. Gregory is in the seventh grade at Bret Harte Middle School. Walter helped pick up the lunches from school on Oct. 20, when Jan had to go out of town.

Ten-year old Michelle Crocker said she packed her lunch with raisins, a breakfast bar, Pringles and a juice box. She decided to make a lunch “because I wanted to help hurricane victims. “

Third grader Peter Pecora brought his lunch to school packed with raisins and granola and Chewy bars. “I made the lunch for all the victims to help them save money” so they don’t have to buy their lunch said Peter.

Six-year-old Karly Much packed her lunch sack full. She placed a “juice box, crackers, pudding, more crackers,” corn nuts, monster snacks and a Snickers bar in her tastefully decorated brown bag. She said she wanted to make a lunch so the Mississippi students don’t have “to spend money and so they have water and food and they don’t have to worry about bringing lunches to school.”

Besides spearheading the project, Chase and another mother, Carol Pecora, helped the school set up the project, collected the lunches and delivered them to Wokas on Oct. 21. Wokas said Kevin Lowry was paying for a semi-truck to take the lunches along with 40,000 pounds of construction equipment to the Hurricane victims. Wokas, her husband Al and possibly their 14-year old son will fly out to be on hand to pass out the lunches on Nov. 1.

“All the credit goes to Jan,” said Principal Kakes. “She read about it and then got it moving. She made a flier for the teachers and collected the lunches. She also provided lists of non-perishable food that was acceptable. She really did a good job.”

Simonds parents were proud of their children and the enthusiastic response they had for the project. “Our children at Simonds are looking outside their community and making a difference,” said Carol Pecora.

She and Chase noted they both had fun working on the project. “It wasn’t hard to do at all. Actually, it was a pleasure to come home and read the messages [on the lunch bags]. I also appreciated the teachers, they were really supportive,” said Chase.

Meanwhile, Wokas continues to help the hurricane-ravaged area. “We made a commitment to help as long as it is needed,” she said.