Charity gets help it needed to feed many

The Good Samaritan Mission started getting calls and deliveries early Thursday.

By SHANNON COLAVECCHIO-VAN SICKLER
© St. Petersburg Times
published February 7, 2003

BALM -- The calls to Good Samaritan Mission started about 7 a.m., and just kept coming.

By Thursday's end, the independent Christian mission had enough rice and beans to feed hungry farm worker families for at least the next few weeks.

After reading about Good Samaritan's struggle to feed families who have lost field work following the recent freeze and unusually cold winter, dozens of people from as far away as Brooksville and St. Petersburg called to offer food and money.

"It was such a miracle!" said mission secretary Bertha Cerda. "Thank you."

The St. Petersburg Free Clinic came by with what Cerda estimated were more than 100 food baskets. A Riverview man pulled his truck up to the mission parking lot and unloaded about $900 worth of rice, pinto beans, flour and cooking oil.

Then he handed out candy to the children in Good Samaritan's day care center, Cerda said.

It was a welcome blessing for the 19-year-old mission, which on Tuesday ran out of food baskets after about 400 families showed up. The farm workers are short of money because local farms have cut their hours in the fields, where strawberries, tomatoes and other produce have not ripened as fast as they should because of the cold.

"The families must have had a feeling all this was coming," Cerda said, "because once that truck came, the line started forming."

"You should have seen that truck," she said. "It was just full of food!"

Want to help?

The Good Samaritan Mission is at 14920 Balm-Wimauma Road. The mailing address is P.O. Box 213, Balm, FL, 33503. Call (813) 634-7136 or (813) 634-4775.

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