Scouts, with a little help from adults, hunt for food drive items

Stephen Teska, 9, left, and Treyton Trujillo, 10, both from Cub Scout Pack 3059, pick up canned goods as part of the 23rd annual Scouting-For-Food drive Saturday in Lawrence and Eudora. In the drive, Scouts helped supply local food pantries.

In a blue Honda Civic with three boys packed into the back, David Teska cased the houses surrounding Schwegler School.

They were on the lookout for bags of food that Lawrence residents had left on doorsteps.

“I got it, I got it,” Treyton Trujillo, 10, shouted somewhere along 21st Terrace when the group spotted two grocery bags.

“You go, I’ll pop the trunk,” Teska said.

The boys, who along with Treyton included 10-year-old Adonis Stanwix and 9-year-old Stephen Teska, were part of Cub Scout Pack 3059. And they had a very good reason to be up early on a Saturday morning, riding through Lawrence neighborhoods with their Cubmaster behind the wheel.

“It’s just fun to give to the poor. And because it is a chance to go outside,” said Treyton, who obviously didn’t mind the cold, rainy weather.

The bags were part of the 23rd annual Scouting-For-Food event in Lawrence and Eudora.

Delayed by last week’s snowstorm, Pack 3059 distributed fliers to homes around Schwegler early last week. On Saturday, they returned to the neighborhood to pick up the bags of food that residents had left on doorsteps, stoops and front porches to donate to the Salvation Army.

The food drive involved about 400 Cub, Venture and Boy Scouts and adults in Douglas County. The collection netted more than 5,200 items in Lawrence and another 3,100 in Eudora.

Coming into the pantry were macaroni and cheese, green beans, noodles, applesauce, muffin mixes, peanut butter and a host of other dry goods.

“We have had a banner year. This is great,” said Cindy Lynn, a public relations representative for the Boy Scouts of America Pelathe District.

The items will help food pantries manage through the summer months when donations tend to run low. The Salvation Army invites other food pantries to participate in the event as well.