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"Everything Happened Fast"
At the Loaves & Fishes pantry at Holy Comforter Episcopal, four volunteers stayed busy on a clear day in March, packing paper grocery bags with goods for that day's clients, including Pamela Smith. The clients, who are referred to Loaves & Fishes by more than 100 local groups and agencies, receive a week's worth of supplies, and may return as often as once a week. The day we visited, the Holy Comforter pantry was lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves bulging with canned beans, tuna, soups, juices, vegetables and fruit, as well as canned and powdered milk, boxes of pasta, hot and cold cereals, plus soap, toilet paper, diapers, baby food, peanut butter, and on and on.
Earlier in the day, the volunteers had received the day's list of clients, as well as checklists detailing what each client will receive, depending on various factors such as the size of the client's family, whether anyone receiving aid is pregnant, has food allergies, and so forth. The Loaves & Fishes pantry workers, like volunteers at most aid organizations in Charlotte, are largely middle-class and upper middle-class churchgoers who know one another and chat freely while working. Later, during a lull in the bagging, the four women have a good time, ironically, trading recipes for rich sweets.
Around noon, the doorbell rings, announcing the arrival of another client. It's Pamela Smith, whose story is a prime example of the "whole new group of people" local agencies are trying to help. Just a few months ago, Smith had never thought of getting help from an official agency. Then, as she put it, "everything seemed to happen fast."
The 41-year-old, previously married strawberry blonde lives in a University-area apartment community with well-maintained landscaping, and even a tennis court. Not the kind of housing where you'd normally expect to find a Loaves & Fishes client. The plants in Smith's apartment were evidence of her green thumb, as were pots of flowers on the apartment's small balcony. DVDs and videos -- Ocean's Eleven, Love Actually, Harry Potter -- sit stacked next to a 25-inch TV, reminders of life before "everything happened fast."
Smith moved from Indianapolis four and a half years ago to be near her sisters, both of whom live in Charlotte. She had been a nurse's assistant for 12 years, but when she couldn't' find similar work here, she settled for a job at a call center. In 2007, the company's work was outsourced, taking 200 jobs with it. Smith next found a job at LA Weight Loss. That company folded. So she started looking for yet another position, and that's when Smith found out how drastically the local job market had shrunk.
"I applied for about 60 different jobs," she says, and "even the crummy little jobs had like a hundred applicants." Smith finally took a part-time position at a retail store in NorthLake Mall, with hopes to eventually go full-time. Then she found out she was pregnant.
"I didn't think I could get pregnant," Smith explains, shaking her head. "I had a very serious miscarriage 14 years ago, and was married for years and never got pregnant. After more than a decade, I assumed it wouldn't happen. But, ta-da! Here we are."
Later, doctors told her that her male baby has a hole in his heart and Down Syndrome. Suddenly Smith, now seven months pregnant, has to see three different doctors each month, including a fetal development specialist and a pediatric cardiologist. For the first time in her life, she needed some outside help. Fortunately, Medicaid is paying for her prenatal care.
"That's the only way I could handle this; I've never asked for any kind of aid before in my life," she explains, almost apologetically.
Unfortunately, the Medicaid help, as valuable as it is to Smith and to her baby's health, also means she can't take a full-time job now, as her prenatal care would no longer be paid for if she made "too much money." Says Smith, "That's not something I can risk, with a baby with a hole in his heart -- so right now, I couldn't go to full-time work even if it was offered."
Trouble is, a part-time job plus a little unemployment check hardly cover Smith's remaining "baby's-coming" expenses, especially since the father has, so far, proved "less than enthusiastic or helpful." At times, Smith doesn't have enough resources to supply the baby and herself with food. Which is how she came to be one of Charlotte's "whole new group of people."
Priority No. 1: Kids
For some area residents who are "living closer to the edge," the current economic spiral can mean not only having to swallow their pride, but also switching from donating to an agency to being one of its clients. That was the case for Beverly Otis who, in an odd twist of fate, fell prey to other people's job losses. Otis, in her 40s with red braids and a big smile, spoke as she was picking up groceries at Loaves & Fishes' pantry at First Presbyterian Uptown. She is disabled, currently waiting for a liver transplant, and living on a set income, but, as she explains, "before just recently, I was able to babysit some, to supplement my income. But the children I was babysitting, their parents were laid off, so I don't have that supplement now, and it's kind of got me bad off right now." Otis' daughters both worked for banks and were helping her out, she says, "but now they've both lost their jobs, so they can't help me since they're on unemployment or on temp assignments. I've been in Charlotte 15 years and I've helped out Loaves & Fishes myself during that time, and now I guess it's kind of a turnabout for me. I'm just glad my daughters are grown; there can't be anything worse than worrying about your children not having enough to eat."
