Places of Plenty : Camarillo’s Five Food Pantries Help Needy Make Ends Meet

CAMARILLO — Some are landscapers, receptionists or nurses aides. Others are farm laborers, assembly line workers or housekeepers. Some have even been laid off from such positions as CEO or engineer.

But they all have one thing in common: They are Camarillo’s working poor. And in order to have enough money to pay rent and utility bills, more than 640 of these working-poor families must get groceries each week from one of Camarillo’s five food pantries.

That’s more than 2,600 individuals who would not have enough to eat each week if the service wasn’t available, said Cecelia Rexford, who runs the Jehovah Jireh pantry sponsored by Camarillo Community Church.

“You don’t see these people as being poor--these are Camarillo’s hidden poor,” said Rexford, who assists between 60 and 70 families every Friday at the Mobile Avenue pantry.

Most of the people who frequent Camarillo’s food pantries work, live in decent houses--often shared with several other families--and wear nice clothing because they have become skilled at thrift-store shopping, Rexford says.

In addition to Camarillo Community Church, the Jubilee, Seventh-day Adventist, St. Columbus Episcopal and St. Mary Magdalen churches also sponsor local food pantries.

Pantry patrons have either been laid off or have big families who must survive on minimum wage. Rexford said, “You can’t pay rent and feed the children on minimum wage.”

In a town of 56,000 where the median income is $53,300, more than $13,000 above the statewide median, it’s difficult to imagine a family of four living on less than $18,000 annually--the government-specified maximum income a family of four can earn and be eligible for USDA and surplus food supplements.

Yet, the number of families who receive assistance grows every day. Last month, 32 new families--totaling 88 individuals--began receiving their weekly groceries from Camarillo’s food pantries.

Debbie Kemp, 28, and her 4-year-old son have been going to Jehovah Jireh intermittently for two years because her husband’s work in construction isn’t stable. Since he’s been out of work for the last four weeks, she’s been stopping in every Friday to pick up groceries.

Between the wages she receives for day-care work and his sporadic income, they earn about $800 a month. They were recently forced to rent out a room so they could pay their monthly rent of $1,050.

“I don’t like the idea of public assistance and don’t really want to go that route,” Kemp said. “We qualify for it, but I want to be independent. But I do need help with food sometimes.”

The $60 worth of groceries her family receives makes meals complete, she says.

“We get all of our breakfast cereals there, so we know breakfast is always taken care of,” Kemp said. “And we make the peanut butter and the fruits and vegetables go a long way.”

Another Camarillo woman told of how her husband made $50,000 annually before he was laid off from his aerospace engineer position with Northrop in 1990. After six years of looking for work in his field, he was finally hired six months ago. The woman, her husband and 15-year-old daughter ran out of savings after the first year and had to mortgage their house.

“We’re just now getting caught up on past debt,” said the woman who chose not to be identified. “I don’t know what we would have done without the pantry. . . . I didn’t want to come here at all at first.”

“But Cecelia explained that what money we do have can be spent on other things if we get our food here,” she said. “So basically, if I don’t have to buy bread and produce, I can get my daughter a pair of shoes.”

Jose Martinez, 45, also came to the pantry one recent afternoon to pick up food for his wife, five children and grandchild. His wife has been supporting the family through her assembly-line work on the graveyard shift at Technicolor Video Services since November, when Martinez lost his job as a security guard. Both are minimum-wage jobs.

“It’s tough, especially for the kids,” he said. “They don’t understand and always want to go to McDonald’s or Chuck E. Cheese, and those places are too expensive for us.”

The bread and cereal from the pantry make a big difference around his house, Martinez said, because he can make sandwiches with the bread and the children always enjoy cereal.

“Having minimum-wage jobs with five kids and a granddaughter isn’t very much money--everything is just too expensive and it makes it hard to afford anything,” added Martinez, who has been doing odd jobs until he can find another security guard position.

When Rexford first tried starting the pantry in 1990, she said no one had any idea that poverty even existed in Camarillo.

“The pastor even told me, ‘There aren’t any low-income people in town,’ ” she said. “But now they can’t believe how many people we feed.”

After Rexford convinced the pastor that there are, indeed, poor people in Camarillo, she opened a temporary pantry on the back patio of her house.

“Some days it would be raining and there would be very little produce and I’d say, ‘Well Lord, you know who’s coming and you know what I need,’ ” Rexford said. “And then people would come by from the church with vegetables from their yards. I can’t take any credit for the pantry--I believe the Lord provides for us.”

Besides receiving garden donations, Rexford stocks the pantry with USDA commodity items, such as peanut butter, bulk pinto beans, rice and macaroni, and some canned goods.

The remainder of the pantry’s supplies, such as produce, bread, cereal and snack food, are purchased with the church’s money at Food Share, the county’s regional food bank. Food Share receives food by the truckload from national donors and large grocery store chains, and gathers it from fields that have already been harvested.

The food bank is then able to offer it at discounted prices to nonprofit organizations throughout the county. Rexford pays 7 cents a pound for almost everything except canned goods, which cost 12 cents a pound.

Rexford ran Jehovah Jireh, which means “the Lord provides,” out of her house for 2 1/2 years before moving to a small place on Ventura Boulevard. Nine months later, she moved to the Mobile Avenue facility, where she’s been for the last four years.

Once again, Rexford finds herself outgrowing her quarters. But Camarillo Community Church is building a new church this summer and she hopes they will move her from the 600-square-foot facility on Mobile Avenue to a 1,400-square-foot space in the basement of the new sanctuary.

More space would also allow Rexford to offer donated clothing on a regular basis, she said, recalling an incident that makes her think there’s a need:

“A 13-year-old boy once came to the pantry with no shoes and he was cold and wet. I asked him where his shoes were and he told me that his dad’s got them. When I asked why, he said, ‘Because he’s at work. He wears them when he goes to work and I wear them when I’m at school.’ ”