We are honored to have a wide variety of partners in addressing food insecurity in our community, but the only one that comes with a big red truck and a siren is Eastside Fire & Rescue.
Every year, the Eastside Firefighters Benevolent Fund organizes a community challenge to “Fill the Truck” with non-perishable items for the Issaquah Food & Clothing Bank. The tradition was started in 2010 by First Due Movers, firefighters with a side business as a moving company. EF&R’s Kevin Scott then took it over in 2017 as part of the Firefighters’ Benevolent program.
The Fill the Truck drive was initially held from the day after Thanksgiving through the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend, but this created operational difficulties for both EF&R and the food bank. So, in 2022, the event was held on two non-consecutive weekends in November, and in 2023 it was held over the Saturday and Sunday before Thanksgiving. The new schedule made it much easier for Kevin to find volunteers to staff the event, and meant the food bank did not have to commit operations staff on additional weekend or holiday days during a time of year that already required staff to work an average of two weekends a month.
Even with the reduced schedule, the impact of the Fill the Truck event can’t be underestimated. In just the one weekend in 2023, the firefighters, support staff, and their families collected almost 10,000 pounds of food and more than $2,000 in cash, which is roughly what the food bank spends on milk and eggs each week in the market. Because of this event, the food bank went into December—the highest-demand month of the year—with a full warehouse.
One of the best and most important parts of this event is the visibility and community building it creates for the food bank. It happens just before Thanksgiving, when people are more mindful of how fortunate they are, and they want to help. Also, people love the firefighters and want to support any cause they are championing. When people see EF&R supporting the food bank, they want to know more and to get involved.
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| (l-r) Michelle Whalen (IFCB), Kevin Scott (EF&R), Adrian Lara Enriquez (IFCB), Erin Longchari (IFCB), Captain and Benevolent Fund President Ryan Hendricks (EF&R) |
“Kevin represents in my mind the most beneficial type of partner from an operational standpoint because he is all about doing what will work best for us for the biggest impact,” said Kim Skok, Operations Manager of the Issaquah Food & Clothing Bank. “A large piece of that is his willingness to try a different schedule and to shoulder most of the burden of pulling off this event.
“He recruited 57 volunteers for one to two shifts for two seven-hour days,” Kim continued. “He transported tents to the site, printed flyers and request lists, coordinated three different rigs to be onsite for people to tour, and worked the entire shift both days with his daughter. His wife and son also worked two half-days. In total, Kevin and his volunteers spent 100 hours on this event, while our staff spent just under 30 hours. This is really important in allowing us to sustain all of our other demands.
“Fill the Truck is one of my favorite events of the fall season and EF&R is one of my favorite partners to work with," Kim concluded. "They just make it easy!”
EF&R’s generosity doesn’t stop at the Fill the Truck event. In the weeks before Thanksgiving, Kevin and EF&R Captain and Benevolent Fund President Ryan Hendricks presented the food bank with a $5,000 check from the Eastside Firefighters Benevolent Fund toward the Holiday Gift Program—enough to provide gift cards for 100 kids in the community. The Benevolent Fund is its own charitable organization affiliated with EF&R to provide specialized financial assistance to the communities EF&R serves—another amazing way the firefighters step in to help meet community needs.