Burglars Plunder Food From Charity
Best Goods Taken From Alexandria Warehouse

By Theresa Vargas
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 4, 2008

Empty, upended boxes were all that remained of neatly stacked cases of canned tuna, spaghetti sauce and beef stew. That's how the food bank volunteers knew the Alexandria facility where they store canned goods for some of the area's neediest had been cleaned out by thieves.

More than 1,000 pounds of canned goods was stolen from the food bank at a time when demand has soared and supplies are dwindling.

"To lose this much food in a theft is disheartening, to say the least," said Gerry Hebert, president of Alexandrians Involved Ecumenically, or Alive. "My first thought was, 'What are we going to do for getting food to people in the short term?'

"And then you get angry that someone would steal from the poor."

The organization, which delivers food to an estimated 12,000 people a year, is not sure when the food was taken, only that it was last seen at the end of February and gone by the end of March.

Alexandria police Lt. Ray Hazel said the theft was reported Wednesday. He said it appears to have been a crime of opportunity.

"If it's there, and the wrong person sees it, they might set a plan in action," Hazel said.

Alive keeps much of its food at a pantry in the space it rents at a local church but uses a warehouse owned by the city to store excess items.

The organization's members hope to replace the food, Hebert said, but they're not sure where they would store it now.

"Do we put it in the same place, where someone can just steal it again?" Hebert asked. "That's the problem."

The timing couldn't be worse, officials said, with talk of a recession and more people struggling to pay for basic necessities.

Brian Smith, chief operating officer of the Capital Area Food Bank, which has 700 member groups across the region, said there have been more calls recently to the hunger lifeline that the food bank uses to refer people to local agencies for help.

"It's the cost of food, it's the economic situation, it's the mortgage crisis -- everything combined into one," he said. A recession would compound the problem, Smith said.

"Anecdotally, our agencies are saying 'I can't get enough food to feed the increasing number of people who are coming to our doors,' " he said.

In 2001, Smith said, member agencies provided food to 273,000 people. By 2005, that number was up to 383,000.

The Alexandria organization experienced a 30 to 40 percent spike in requests for food in the last year, Hebert said.

"Our requests for food are going up every month," said Ken Naser, executive director of Alive.

"Our greatest hope is that there comes a time when there doesn't need to be an organization like ours," Naser said. "But we've been around for 39 years, and I don't see us going away anytime soon."

The stolen food was for a food distribution program Alive runs the last Saturday of every month. It is aimed at helping people get by as their food stamps run low.

The organization distributes food from three locations to about 600 families.

Jean Moore, a volunteer who is Alive's food chairman, discovered the theft when she went to the warehouse to pick up food last Friday morning.

The door of the garage was locked and undisturbed, Moore said, but as soon as she stepped inside, she noticed the tossed boxes.

"I was just heartsick," she said.

Gone were the quality goods such as meat, tuna and spaghetti sauce, she said. Tossed to the side were canned vegetables and baked beans. She believes that the thieves took about a third of the supply.

Some of the stolen food had been collected during a Boy Scout drive last fall and Alexandria's annual Turkey Trot race.

She added that although a police report was filed, she can't imagine they will ever see the food again. The cardboard boxes have been touched by too many people to fingerprint.

"If they had just taken what they needed, it would have been more understandable," she said. "But they took so much more than anyone could possibly use. That's what makes it so difficult."