SEATTLE — Staff at the White Center Food Bank say someone broke into their offices and did significant damage over the holiday weekend.
Carmen Smith, the executive director of the White Center Food Bank, said they are still processing the break-in.
“You’ll see a lot of bees sleeping in flowers – it’s really kind of a magical space – it saddens me a little bit that someone wanted to disrupt it,” Smith said.
That space was violated when someone over the weekend busted open the door and preceded to ransack the food bank's offices. They estimate $7,000 in damages were done.
“You would hope that the food bank would be one of those safe, untouchable places,” Smith said.
Despite the break-in, their work didn’t stop.
“We’re responsible to the community that we serve and so we always put them first and we’ve done so over the whole pandemic and I think that’s part of what makes this harder too,” Smith continued.
The pandemic still taking its toll. Their numbers show that in May they served 7200 people – that’s two thousand more clients that the same time in 2019.
That’s a lot of people. That’s a lot of food but we’re pretty proud that we’ve been able to manage the food supply really well, we haven’t run out of food we haven’t had to turn anyone away that’s come to us and that’s what’s important,” Smith said.
The community they serve seeing the importance too. In the days since the breaking they’ve seen donations pour in from across western Washington. A reminder that their work matters as the challenges keep coming.
“Formula is still hard to find, food is more expensive for us and that is part of the reason that we’re seeing more people is that everything is more expensive,” Smith said.
The break in is simply the latest reminder that their work never stops.