Food drive sets record

Friday, November 29, 2013
Jessica Muilenburg's sixth grade class was one of two awarded a pizza party for their efforts to raise food supplies for the needy in the local community.

A yearly food drive in Mountain Home shattered a record following a month-long effort that wrapped up Oct. 31.

The Alliance Title and Escrow Corporation office here was one of dozens of branches located across the western United States that participated in the "Closing the Hunger Gap" effort.

The food drive in Mountain Home brought in more than 7,700 pounds of food this year, said Jamie Springer, a spokesperson with the local title company. During the program's debut in 2012, the company's campaign brought in more than 1,000 pounds of canned and non-perishable food items.

According to Springer, the company's offices across Idaho and three other states collected a total of 32,000 pounds of food. Mountain Home's branch was credited with bringing in the most amount of food for the second straight year.

Students from Hacker Middle School helped the local title firm set that record by bringing in nearly half of the food the company collected, according to Springer.

"We had to pick up the food weekly at Hacker since they had so much," she said.

To thank the school for its help, the title company hosted a pizza party Friday afternoon for two classrooms that brought in the most food. Ginger Vogt's fifth grade classroom raised 1,169 pounds of food while Jessica Muilenburg's sixth graders added another 680 pounds of non-perishable items.

Proceeds this year will benefit the Christian and Baptist Church food bank in Mountain Home.

"We wanted something that would obviously stay in Elmore County," Springer said. "We wanted to support activities that directly benefit our communities here."

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