KAUMAKANI — Kelvin Moniz of the Kaua‘i Independent Food Bank said the football officials wanted to do a food distribution Saturday at the parking lot fronting the Aloha Sweet Delites store in Kaumakani.
“This is about giving back to the community,” said Teddy Arroyo, who in addition to being a football official is also the president of the Kaua‘i Pop Warner Football League. “We can’t play football for now, so we can take care the community that comes out to support us.”
More than 270 food packages were handed out by the football officials, who partnered with the Valenciano family and KIFB to move the food packages.
“Food is in big demand now because of the COVID-19 and the amount of people who lost their jobs because of the pandemic,” Moniz said. “Today we have a variety of foods, including a bag of produce with long beans and sweet potato. Every time we do a distribution, we have different items. It’s whatever is available, and we’re going to keep doing this until we get out of this.”
At the same time the football officials were distributing food in Kaumakani, the labor unions on Kaua‘i hosted a food distribution at Vidinha Stadium in Lihu‘e, with nearly 400 food packages prepared with the help of the Hawai‘i Foodbank Kaua‘i Branch.
Normally headed up by the United Public Workers union, the Saturday food distribution was moved to Vidinha Stadium after its previous distribution ran out of food and traffic overwhelmed the existing roadways to the UPW building on Rice Street in Lihu‘e.
Lenny Rapozo, another football official and manager of the Kaua‘i War Memorial Convention Hall, said that was the same thing that plauged the final produce distribution by Malama Kaua‘i last week.
“That was their final distribution,” Rapozo said. “They had a six-week program, added a three-week extension, and last Wednesday was the final one. There was a line of cars.”
He said it was a good thing Arnold Cruz works for Safety Systems, because they could use the traffic cones to guide the line of cars through the parking lot.
The Kaumakani food distribution was scheduled to start at 9 a.m.
“We had to let the cars go early,” Moniz said. “They were lining up early. If we waited until 9 a.m., there would be a traffic jam and we would all be in trouble.”
•••
Dennis Fujimoto, staff writer and photographer, can be reached at 245-0453 or dfujimoto@thegardenisland.com.
