By Kyle Swenson, Photo: Nathan Morgan/The Washington Post, The Washington Post, April 18, 2022
It was Friday, and for more than a decade, Fridays had been when the food deliveries arrived. Around 15,000 pounds of food were expected this morning. Volunteers were hauling the first boxes off a truck. Stacy Downey, 52, was determined, if possible, to treat this day like any other, so she was now standing outside the Little Food Pantry That Could, shoulders hunched against the morning cold, sliding into her familiar workday routine.
“How much red?” she asked, leaning over boxes of peppers. “Do we have any yellow? Orange? The greens ones are okay but they are not as popular as the red, yellow or orange.”
A dozen volunteers pushed in and out of the pantry’s door, stepping over the smear of sunlight where Downey’s dog Roxy dozed. By the next morning, when the first shoppers arrived for the Little Pantry’s weekly food distribution, every pepper, jar of peanut butter and bag of coffee needed to be in place. For Downey, the pantry’s founder and driving motor, steering all the moving pieces of preparation swallowed up her entire focus — and kept her from remembering that today, March 25, was the last time this would happen.
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