At 1 p.m. on a summer Wednesday afternoon, the heat ripples off the blacktops of Crooked Creek Food Pantry on the north side of Indianapolis. Cars come in off Michigan Road and slowly loop around the back of the building. They can expect to wait about 45 minutes.
At the end of the line, volunteers with greet them with groceries and fresh produce.
Crooked Creek Food Pantry serves more than 1,300 families every week on Indy’s north side, relying on a group of more than 150 volunteers to get it done.
Despite the recent heat wave, volunteers stepped up like they usually do: helping to provide community members with food at the pantry’s mobile distribution.
The work is constant and physical. Volunteers wave cars through, lift crates, pass out produce, offering water bottles and smiles where they can.
“Volunteers are the lifeblood of any nonprofit. It’s no different here at Crooked Creek. We could not serve the community without our volunteers,” said Kathy Hahn Keiner, who is the pantry’s executive director. Hahn Keiner helped start the Crooked Creek Food Pantry a decade ago and has seen the its physical space expand to meet the community’s needs: from a one-room conference room to a full-scale mobile distribution.
Among those volunteers are JoAn Pfeifle and Jim Wine, who are some of the essential volunteers keeping Crooked Creek functioning. Together, they have been volunteering with hunger relief efforts at Crooked Creek for a combined 10 years.
“When the line is snaking around the corner, you don’t forget that,” JoAn said.
In all his years of service, Jim said the line has continued to grow.
“It’s a good feeling, the feeling of helping others,” Jim said. “But every time I go home, my wife asks where the line was. And I always say, ‘It was out in the street.'”
Seeing the rising need is one of the reasons both JoAn and Jim say they’ve kept showing up week after week. Hahn Keiner said Wednesday mornings tend to bring in the same dedicated crew, including volunteers from local congregations like St. Monica Catholic Church.
The consistency helps the entire operation move smoothly.
Pallets picked up from Gleaners help provide 85% of the total food distributed at Crooked Creek.
“It’s grown dramatically and we’re doing about 20% more than even this time last year. And, we’re still going up, even from the pandemic,” she said.
