MOUNTLAKE TERRACE — Twice a month, volunteers for the Concern for Neighbors Food Bank at Terrace View Presbyterian Church enjoy a hot Chinese meal.
On Tuesday, volunteers filled their plates with general’s chicken, fried rice and egg rolls and ate together in one of the rooms of the church.
The meals are meant to thank the food bank volunteers for helping the community, said Kao Saeteurn, who along with his wife, Ming Choi, provides the meals to several food banks, including Concern for Neighbors and Lynnwood Food Bank.
The couple opened Flying Dragon Chinese Cuisine in February 2008 in Shoreline. They noticed that they consistently bought a little more food than they could use at the restaurant. So they decided to cook the food and donate it to volunteers at food banks.
“We tend to buy over and it just makes sense that every time that we’re over we make good use of it,” Saeteurn said. “It’s fresh food.”
They figured out that they could provide lunch for 75 people every two weeks with their food overages. Last summer, they started providing the meals to volunteers at Lynnwood and Mountlake Terrace food banks.
It’s something, they like to do, Saeteurn, 31, said, because they used food banks while they were growing up. He is originally from Thailand, while Choi is from China.
“Growing up we were immigrants and really poor so we lived off of food-bank food,” he said. “Living off of food bank food, as demeaning as some people might think it is, really did help us to get where we are today in life.”
Choi runs the restaurant most of the week while he works as the associate director of facilities at Edmonds Community College. Saeteurn said he hasn’t been able to deliver the food himself or meet any of the volunteers who eat the meals, but he would like to one day.
“I’d like to stop in and actually talk to them and see how they even get the volunteers,” he said.
The meals are something Concern for Neighbors Food Bank volunteer Rhonda Miketinas looks forward to at the end of her shift.
“I think it’s wonderful that somebody will bring the food here,” she said. “It’s like a thank you for what we do and it’s nice because you don’t get thanked very much.”
Miketinas has been volunteering at the food bank for more than two years. She has told others about the food from Flying Dragon Chinese Cuisine and would like to visit the restaurant, at 1437 NW Richmond Beach Road in Shoreline.
“I keep saying I want to go patronize his restaurant but I haven’t done it yet,” she said. “I have told people they have really good food and that they feed us and if they have a chance to go by there.”
About 20 volunteers typically stay for lunch on Tuesdays when meals are donated, according to pastor Richard Gibson, who volunteers at the Concern for Neighbors Food Bank. The lunches give the volunteers an opportunity to socialize, he said.
“We’re just relaxed,” Gibson said. “We don’t usually have time to sit and talk, and lunch is that time.”
Saeteurn said that he and Choi weren’t expecting any attention for donating the meals. The food bank volunteers, he said, are the ones who deserve the real credit.
“It doesn’t cost too much and it makes the volunteers happy so they can keep providing food to the needy,” Saeteurn said. “We just want others to know that it doesn’t take much to make a difference, even in a time of economical crisis.”
Amy Daybert: 425-339-3491, adaybert@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
