Hunger at Home, DoorDash distribute 70,000th meal at PayPal Park

The weekly deliveries from the Earthquakes' home base provide food for homebound seniors and people with disabilities or other obligations who can't make it to food distribution events.

With San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan standing beside him, former Earthquakes star Shea Salinas showed he’s still got it — bouncing a Mandarin orange off his head into a delivery driver’s car in the parking lot of PayPal Park. That was a neat trick, but even better was what it represented: The pair were giving out the 70,000th meal distributed since last July by Hunger at Home through a partnership with DoorDash and the Earthquakes.

There was a lot of hoopla surrounding the milestone, with Hunger at Home CEO Ewell Sterner, Earthquakes President Jared Shawlee, DoorDash Head of Social Impact Sueli Shaw and Mahan all talking about the partnership with Project Dash, the DoorDash initiative that has provided more than 3.5 million deliveries to the needy since its start in 2018.

“The reach of this partnership allows us to provide meals to seniors and individuals with disabilities who are facing food insecurity and families whose work or child care obligations prevent them from coming to our weekly drive-through distribution,” Sterner said.  “Through the partnership, we’ve increased our food distribution by over 200 percent, with the ability to make an even larger impact.”

But what’s really amazing is that this has been happening at the PayPal Park parking lot every Monday, as more than 150 cars line up to pick up food either for themselves or, in the case of DoorDashers, to deliver meals to those who can’t. The food includes fruits and veggies, milk, bread, canned goods and premade meals — packaged up by volunteers who also load the food into the cars.

“What you see behind me is what we see every Monday,” Earthquakes President Jared Shawlee said, “which is our staff and volunteers helping to bring food to our community in San Jose.”

Sterner said Hunger at Home serves as a conduit — connecting convention centers, sports arenas, hotels and other venues that have unused food with a network of nonprofits and now through direct food assistance. For more information or to learn how to volunteer or donate, you can go to www.hungerathome.org.

“COVID-19 and other challenges have only amplified the need for food assistance,” he said. “We must continue to work together to ensure that every person in San Jose has nourishing, healthy meals.”

HEALTHY ACCESS: It was a busy Monday morning for Mayor Mahan, who also stopped by Planned Parenthood Mar Monte in San Jose to deliver remarks at the ribbon-cutting for the BD COR system, which will provide better, faster test results for sexually transmitted infections.

And that’s a big deal for patients from lower-income communities who will have access to similar fast, accurate tests as people with private insurance have, said Dr. Laura Dalton, Planned Parenthood Mar Monte’s chief medical operating officer.  “It’s bringing state-of-the-art, gold-standard care for our patients. It’s about our ability to close the health equity gap,” said Dalton, who added that the system can test for several infections at once, which decreases the “test burden” for patients, too.

NOW SHOWING: You may have heard of the Silicon Valley Pain Index, the report put out the past three years by the San Jose State Human Rights Institute that gives an overview of the income inequality and discrimination that exists in the valley. Now the report has been turned into a documentary by award-winning filmmaker and former SJSU sociology professor Bob Gliner that started airing on PBS stations in the Bay Area on Sunday.

The one-hour documentary will next air April 4 at 11 p.m. on KQED+ (Comcast Ch. 710).