Copperas Cove High students, post office team up to stamp out hunger

On Saturday, she stood in front of the Cove Wal-Mart and collected food in sacks to be contributed to community organizations. Villa collected 278 cans at Cove High, and continued to contribute food to the cause on Saturday.

“I love helping the community as much as I can,” said Villa, a sophomore at Cove High, a student of business education teacher Heather Calhoun, who coordinated the school’s efforts. “I’m always volunteering. I do the Stuff the Bus (school supply drive), I do this (event) and I do the Relay For Life. I try to help out the community as much as I can because they’ve done so much for my family and me. They helped my dad get an opportunity here in Cove and they helped us get out of trouble. I enjoy living here in such a small town. They have open arms towards everyone. I really enjoy it here and I try to volunteer as much

as I can.”

Nonperishable food at the store was collected from customers and then taken to the Cove post office, where it was weighed by volunteers and then given to people from three agencies in the community: Cove House Emergency Homeless Shelter, My Brother’s House and Baptist Benevolence. Representatives from those groups then took the food to their organizations. The food is divided equally among the agencies.

Seven students volunteered at the Wal-Mart, where people could drop off cash to be used for food purchases in addition to giving food, Calhoun said. The post office’s goal was 15,000 pounds, Calhoun said. Letter carriers also collected food on their delivery stops.

“On campus, we had over 200 kids volunteer,” Calhoun said. “They’ve been collecting food for the last three weeks.”

A lot of teachers contributed food, as well, she said.

“I think the response was good, with (Calhoun) getting the school involved,” said Tony Perry, Stamp Out Hunger coordinator for the Cove post office and a letter carrier, as he worked with Calhoun and students at Wal-Mart. He hopes next year’s event will be bigger, and “from what I see, it’s only going to get bigger.” He likes serving people and helping a good cause, he said.

Brian Hawkins, executive director of Cove House, said the contributions represent a significant help to his organization, as this event is probably the second-largest contribution of food his group receives each year behind the Food For Families event.

“It’s a tremendous help to us in supporting our residents at the Cove House,” he said.

Doris McCrary, who heads up Baptist Benevolence and was coordinator of the event for Cove, said she appreciates the assistance of everyone involved and expected to surpass last year’s total. She said Cove students brought in well over 3,000 pounds of food this year.

“It’s going to be tremendously a lot more than last year,” she said. “Last year, we got a little over 4,000 pounds. This year, we have already exceeded that. We are going to probably double at least what we did last year.”

The drive for the post office would fall a little short of its goal: 13,677 pounds. But Calhoun said that amount was triple what was accumulated last year, and McCrary said the post office had never collected more than 10,000 pounds before. Cove students contributed 4,287 pounds of food.

“Though we did come in a little short of our overall goal of 15,000 pounds of food, it was really awesome to see so many different entities in our community come together for the greater good,” Calhoun said later in an email.