MISSION VIEJO : Food Bank Clients Include Some Who Once Had Plenty

There was a time when Kathryn McCullough cleaned houses for food. Not for herself, but for others.

When money for her Adopt-A-Neighbor food bank ran short, McCullough would hire herself out as a “sanitary specialist” in affluent South County neighborhoods.

There, McCullough made a startling discovery. Some of the people who lived in areas she had presumed to be populated by the wealthy were struggling to make ends meet. Some of their refrigerators, she found out, were as bare as those of the most impoverished food bank clients.

“Everything might look good for them, but that shiny new car, it’s leased. That beautiful home, it’s leased,” said McCullough, who has run Adopt-A-Neighbor in South County since 1969. “But their children are just as hungry as any homeless person’s.”

As Orange County has struggled with the ups and downs of economic uncertainty, especially since the county’s December bankruptcy filing, an increasing number of people who once had plenty have been forced to turn to agencies such as food banks.

“I’ve helped some people who really used to be wealthy,” McCullough said. “You never know when it could be you.”

McCullough, who is a Lake Forest City Council member, estimates that 10,000 to 12,000 people turn to Adopt-A-Neighbor each month to share the food that is stocked in a dozen bread racks and 20 refrigerators at the agency’s Mission Viejo warehouse.

Adopt-A-Neighbor receives help from the county, which gives $40,000 a year to the program. The balance of the food bank’s budget, about $60,000, comes from local contributions.

“We get seniors in here every couple of weeks with a $5 bill,” she said. “Some husbands won’t donate to us, but their wives clip coupons and buy us food.”

From a desk at the warehouse’s front door, McCullough tries to bring order to the chaos. On a recent morning, she shouted orders to volunteer helpers while shaking a warning finger at a pair of unruly children, putting yet another caller on hold and handing out forms to prospective clients.

Despite the frenzy, “everyone gets fed,” McCullough said. “Nobody goes without.”

“You see the need when a man cries because he didn’t know it was so easy,” she said. “Rich, poor, it makes no difference. . . . We feed them all.”