SPOKANE, Wash. – Tuesday is the big day for Tom’s Turkey Drive and hundreds of volunteers from all over town will come to the Spokane Arena to help distribute the turkeys to local families.
So what is the process that could help explain just how much work it takes to pull this off every year?
To answer that, we went to 2nd Harvest where all the volunteers are getting hundreds of boxes moving along a belt.
The boxes do not pull themselves together. They also do not fill themselves with an entire Thanksgiving meal. This is not just food in a box though.
Julie Humphreys from 2nd Harvest said the dash to feed this many people is new for them, but important.
“We know we can feed people, but we want to feed them well,” she said.
Donors like Darigold, Franz Bakery, Starbucks, and the local farmer who gives hundreds of pounds of potatoes and apples every year are critical to the success of Tom’s Turkey Drive. It is also the 7,800 volunteers that come to help.
Monday night, 2nd Harvest planned to fill ten freight trucks with enough food for 11,000 meals.
The real magic will happen at the Spokane Arena where more volunteers will unload those meals and hand them to people who need them most.
“People like to be part of an effort to help other people,” Humphreys said. “To be able to hand them a little bit of dignity and hope along with that food box. That makes it worthwhile.”
In total, volunteers will put together 11,000 boxes. Already, 3,000 boxes have been delivered to other areas in need around Spokane, like Airway Heights, Deer Park and Cheney.