By Suzanne Hodgson
Staff Writer

Jodi Bissonnette stands in the dark and snow outside York County’s Masons Lodge with her hair frozen and plastered to her bright red face.
She’s freezing for food.
Bissonnette is director of the York County Food Rescue out of Sanford, which is holding another food drive to try to keep her building filled with food for the holiday season. In the last year, Bissonnette has seen a growing demand from local food shelters asking for more and more food each month to keep up with the increasing numbers of families in need of food.
The Mason’s Lodge invited Bissonnette to speak during a meeting about her food rescue.  The lodge liked her idea of holding a food drive and even started a challenge with neighboring lodges to see which could raise the most food.
“We were really lucky today,” said Bissonnette on Saturday, the last day of the two-day food drive outside the lodge.
One person donated $50, a grocery store who did not wish to be mentioned donated one truckload and Marden’s donated two truckloads to the rescue.
If that seems like a lot of food, one step inside the rescue building shows empty floor space and room for many more boxes. The unheated warehouse in Sanford is donated space for the rescue, along with everything inside  – including a forklift.
Bissonnette says all donations are appreciated, from $5 to $5,000. The money not only goes to pantries in need but helps put gas in the forklift and pay the electric bill.
“I used to have a month reserve,” said Bissonnette. But now, with the demand from shelters and food banks coupled with the poor economy, the rescue is barley keeping up with the demands of the pantries.
Bissonnette created the rescue program in 2007 when Wayside Soup Kitchen announced it would stop serving the people of York County.  Wayside could not keep up with the cost of operating in the county, so the people of York were left with little help. Bissonnette was working with Wayside when it closed and realized the need the people of York had for a food program.
During its first year, the food rescue distributed more than 1.2 million pounds of donated food to shelters, pantries and soup kitchens.
The rescue relies on its volunteers to take the donated food and sort it according to what each pantry or shelter requests.  Each month Bissonnette sends an e-mail to all the local shelters with a list of what is in stock at the rescue.  The shelters and pantries return the list with their requests marked and volunteers make up the pallets to deliver.
 Early Monday morning the rescue received some additional help from off duty Coast Guard members, who are happy to volunteer inside the chilly warehouse.
“Why spend all week sitting around doing stuff for ourselves when we could be doing something for someone else,” said Coast Guard engineer Jimmy Wacker of the Coast Guard Cutter Reliance ship.
The Coast Guard volunteers will be back again next week to help Bissonnette load up the trucks for the last delivery during the holiday season.
“We’ve been making it month to month on a wing and a prayer,” said Bissonnette but looking forward, the spring is making her nervous.
During the holiday season Bissonette says people are very generous, but over the past six months pantries have seen a 35 percent increase of those in need.  
“Food pantries are seeing people they’ve never seen before need food,” said Bissonnette.
“You hear stuff on the news about the economic conditions what they are now.  There’s a need.  Times are tough, people need whatever help we can give them,” said Fred Beatham, a member for the York Lodge for 35 years.
Beatham and Bissonnette attribute the increase in food pantry needs to the middle class, who have to ask for help for the first time.
Bissonnette says she hears people every day saying they never thought they would be in this situation, but some of the best donations come from the people who have been on the other side. Bissonnette herself needed help years ago when she was a single mother raising small children.
The York Food Rescue will host one last food drive this weekend at the Kittery outlets.  Bissonnette suggests donating one-course meals like pasta, tuna fish, macaroni and cheese or cereal to help the food pantries this holiday season.

Staff Writer Suzanne Hodgson can be reached at 282-4337, ext. 233.