SEATTLE – Thieves hit an International District food bank twice in the past week, taking $5,000 worth of frozen chickens, salmon steaks, rice and other goods.
The burglaries have temporarily crippled the program, which is run by the Asian Counseling and Referral Service and serves 5,000 households a year. But supporters in the community have come forward offering donations to help, said Carole Orr, an assistant at the food bank.
“Praise God in heaven – people have just opened their hearts,” Orr told a Seattle newspaper. “That’s the one real positive thing about this.”
Orr discovered the first theft last Wednesday morning after thieves cut through a chain-link fence and pushed their way through a back window in the modular building on South King Street.
The second break-in was discovered Friday morning – the day after agency workers had begun restocking. The food bank has stopped accepting food donations until workers secure the building, which sustained about $2,000 worth of damage.
“It’s really sad that this would happen now,” said Gary Tang, a program director with the agency.
The food bank doesn’t usually have salmon steaks or frozen chickens, but it was planning to give them out as a special treat to start the new year, Tang said. The thieves emptied both of the bank’s large freezers and took more than 50 50-pound bags of rice.
A homeless man in the area claimed to have seen several people pushing loaded shopping carts covered with blankets away from the building one night last week, Orr said.
Tang said he hopes someone in the community might provide a lead.
“This was an organized effort,” he said. “They might try to go through someone, like a restaurant or store, if they want to exchange this stuff for cash.”
Financial donations to the Asian Counseling &Referral Service (ACRS) can be made online at the agency’s Web site, www.acrs.org. Supporters so far have offered hundreds of dollars, Orr said.
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