Heroes of Everyday Life - 2002

Terry Bomkamp
Rockford, IL
Terry Bomkamp has helped hundreds of men, women, and children from Muncie, IN to Rockford, IL. In Muncie, he founded the Hoosier Bounty food rescue program, which works with local chefs and restaurants to collect and distribute prepared and perishable foods. In Rockford, he supports the Hunger Connection, a local food bank, which in turn supports MELD (a homeless shelter for pregnant women and teen mothers), WAVE (a domestic violence emergency shelter), ARC (an adult drug addiction recovery program), and the Rockford Boys and Girls Club.

Joanne Booth
Oakland, ME
Joanne Booth is committed to fighting hunger and educating community members about how they can help make a difference. In 1995, Booth coordinated an annual bake-off where boys and girls from local Scout troops peeled apples and rolled dough for 125 pies served during a Thanksgiving dinner for 800 needy people in Oakland. She also developed a program with Oakland's local Head Start organization to teach parents how to prepare nutritious meals on a limited income. And, throughout the year, she takes groups of students to local homeless shelters where they learn to purchase ingredients and prepare meals for residents.

Albert Fagins
Mission Viejo, CA
For the past five years, Albert Fagins has spent every Tuesday night feeding the homeless of Santa Ana as part of the Homeless Ministry Outreach program started by Living Waters Christian Church. There, he helps prepare and serve meals to residents, often taking the time to socialize with them and offer words of understanding and encouragement. On weekends, Fagins also travels with another church group to help repair other churches and outreach centers in the area.

Joe Fleming
Downingtown, PA
As a Board member of the Greater Philadelphia Food Bank, Joe Fleming takes raising money for hunger-related causes seriously. Recently, he coordinated a team of 45 Sodexho chefs and managers in the Philadelphia area to sponsor a 20th anniversary gala, raising $93,000. He also supports Check-Out Hunger, which raised more than $200,000. Fleming takes fighting hunger very seriously, too. As a Sodexho manager, he requires every member of his team to participate in at least one hunger-related initiative as part of his or her yearly performance review.

Al Philpot
Princeton, NJ
Al Philpot supports many hunger relief initiatives in the Princeton area throughout the year. He is a member of the Community FoodBank of New Jersey planning committee, and a staunch supporter of Sodexho's annual Servathon efforts. He also organizes the annual Blue Jean Ball every year, which raises more than $250,000 for the food bank.

Eric Rappaport, CEC
Lehigh Valley, PA
Eric Rappaport, a member of the Second Harvest Food Bank's advisory board in the Lehigh Valley, has been involved in hunger-relief efforts for more than four years, hosting fundraisers and sponsoring community events. After the food bank received 12,000 pounds of fresh/frozen salmon, he quickly planned a 1,000-family fish feast. He also developed Salmon Savvy, a cookbook and training guide for soup kitchens, rehabilitation centers, emergency pantries, and other agencies on how to properly distribute and prepare the fish using readily available products.

Mary Rohde
Chattanooga, TN
Mary Rohde is an expert at turning a seemingly ordinary food drive into the premiere event of the season. She prints and sells t-shirts, dreams up contests to create competition among local Sodexho and Erlanger employees to generate donations, then brings in the local media to increase community awareness. The result? Collecting, in just one week, more than 65,000 pounds of food for the Chattanooga Area Food Bank

Robert Schmitz
Boston, MA
Ten years ago, Robert Schmitz founded a program that brings meals to the homeless on Thanksgiving. Last year, the program provided meals to more than 250 people in need. He is also a "regular" at Pine Street Inn, an emergency shelter for homeless men and women. He prepares meals and organizes fundraisers-basically anything he can do to make a difference in the lives of people who are at risk of going hungry or without shelter.

James Winkler
Atlanta, GA
Last year, James Winkler was honored by the Atlanta Business Forum for his efforts to fight hunger. He is involved in many initiatives and organizes volunteers to sort more than 13,000 pounds of food for distribution to area homeless shelters, and works with Project Rescue to prepare and distribute meals to the elderly and disabled. Winkler was also instrumental in coordinating the Hosea Williams Thanksgiving Dinner for the homeless in 2000, securing a truck to deliver 500 turkeys to needy Atlanta residents.

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