(Photos courtesy Judi Yazzolino)

As promised, we have an update on Saturday’s big food-drive kickoff, courtesy of West Seattle Food Bank development director Judi Yazzolino, with a reminder that more donations are welcome:

The West Seattle Food Bank would like to thank Northwest Harvest for setting up the kickoff of their statewide Food Drive with Safeway & Albertsons at the Admiral Safeway on Saturday, and Seahawks Wide Receiver Doug Baldwin and former Seahawks Cliff Avril & Richard Sherman for coming to support and offer autographs and pictures to those who donated food.

Everyone had so much fun and we collected over 1,700 pounds of food & $125, half of which came to the West Seattle Food Bank, and half went with the US Coast Guard, whose representatives were extremely helpful in helping load it all into the vans. Thank you to everyone who put this event together, who came and donated food and especially to Doug, Cliff, & Richard for giving us your time and support!

This food drive was set up to help all of the furloughed federal employees, contractors, and other business owners and employees affected by the government shutdown. We also want to be sure and help those individuals that we serve who received their food stamps two weeks early on January 20th and may be running low by next week. There are West Seattle Food Bank barrels at the Admiral Safeway by checkout where you can continue to donate to help those in need.

The store is at 2622 California SW.