Food Bank Joins Ranks of Homeless

A Mission Viejo food bank that for 30 years has served low-income, senior and homeless people across Orange County will close Dec. 31 after receiving a final eviction notice from its landlord.

Nonprofit Adopt-A-Neighbor was founded in 1969 by ordained minister Kathryn McCullough of Lake Forest and has been open ever since. Besides providing food at a nominal cost to hundreds of families from Santa Ana to San Clemente every month, the food bank gives away Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners to thousands of people every year.

The center, which is funded almost entirely by private donations, was evicted after failing to pay its October rent on time, said McCullough, who has been a Lake Forest City Council member since 1994 and was recently elected that city’s mayor.

“I’m hoping that there’s someone who has a good Samaritan heart, that they’re willing to give a little back,” McCullough said. “I can’t see how companies would not want to better the community that their businesses and corporations are located in.”

Adopt-A-Neighbor has received several eviction notices since it moved 12 years ago into a warehouse at a Mission Viejo industrial park. Each time previously, McCullough and her volunteer staff has managed to scrape together enough money to keep the center in business.

McCullough said she has raised the money by mortgaging her home “so many times I can’t even count.” She said she has borrowed about $250,000 over the years for the center, which counts among its other benefactors local residents, businesses and civic groups.

Last year, a gift of $5,000 from a local Bank of America branch enabled the center to stay open during Christmas.

The service will resume as soon as she finds another location for it and has enough donations to reopen, McCullough said.

Head volunteer Elizabeth Valentine, 75, said the eviction won’t put Adopt-A-Neighbor out of business.

“If we have to take a break, we’ll take a break,” Valentine said. “But I don’t think we will, because [McCullough] loves these people. These are her people.”

Valentine, whom many customers call “Ma,” said she wants to move to a retail area so the center will be easier to find and more accessible to patrons who ride the bus.

Meanwhile, customers of the food bank say they don’t know how they will get by. The center charges its customers $7 a week for $35 worth of groceries from its stock of dairy and meat products, bakery goods, fresh produce, meats and canned foods. Volunteers often give away packages of food to customers who can’t afford the $7 fee.

Mission Viejo resident Sue Scott, 52, who has been shopping at Adopt-A-Neighbor for a year, said many residents depend on the service to make ends meet.

“It’s been a great help,” Scott said. “I don’t know what the people will do, I really don’t.”