Each week Grey Bears drivers deliver 2200 Brown Bags to members. Pat Brown, our Office Manager, coordinates the deliveries. She relies upon 75 regular and 30 substitute drivers each week to deliver on 79 routes. Both men and women drive routes using standard cars, half ton pick-ups and vans. Some drop off bags at locations where someone else distributes them. Some wait at designated places for people to come and get their bags. Others deliver individual bags to homes. And some visit with shutins in addition to delivering the grocery bags. During the week some drivers pick up food from donating stores such as Safeway and Trader Joe's. Some transport gleaners to and from the fields using the Grey Bear Van. And still other drivers do runs for Warehouse operations, managed by Russell Lerner, and the Thrift Store, managed by Lyla Games. Because we rely on so many drivers all year long there is always a need for more volunteers. For one reason we cover the entire Santa Cruz county including Felton, Scotts Valley, and Watsonville. Another reason we need more drivers is that our permanent volunteers need occasional time off to take vacations or to attend to personal needs. As a result the available drivers each week shift about often in unexpected ways. Knowing this makes it easy to appreciate the difficult job Pat Brown has been doing to insure Brown Bags are delivered to everyone each week. Asked how many drivers she could use Pat says 4 or 5 more regular drivers and about twenty more substitute drivers would make things much easier. One of Pat's heroes is Charleen Van Veldhuizen. Charleen delivers 173 Brown Bags each week. Apologies to all the other wonderful drivers not mentioned who show up each week consistently to make our Brown Bag Program successful. Chip Chipman is one of our longest term volunteers. He started helping in '84. For the last 15 years he has been driving whenever it is needed. Currently, he drives the new Grey Bear Van bringing up to 175 Brown Bags to Watsonville each week for further distribution. During the week he makes trips to Safeway Stores in Capitola and Aptos and Trader Joe's to gather food that they donate to our program. Jim Carter is a three year driver volunteer. He has a Class A license that enables him to drive a flatbed truck on farms where the gleaners pick. He also drives the van. In addition, he delivers up to 45 brown bags each week to Watsonville. Chuck Lombard first got involved with the Brown Bag Program in the '80s when he accepted drop-off bags at his gas station in Felton. After leaving the area for some years he returned two years ago and volunteered first as food packer and then as a driver. He currently handles three routes with 48 bags on Thursday to Felton and on Friday he delivers to Scotts Valley. On one of his routes he delivers to several shut-ins who he enjoys chatting with. Jim Nee, one of our Directors, has been driving two routes for 6 months. One in Aptos he delivers to on Thursdays has 17 shut-ins, which he delights in telling how wonderful the people are. And his other route is actually a drop-off location in downtown Santa Cruz where 58 bags are picked up by individuals who often remain for long friendly chats. From this small sampling of drivers it is clear we are all fortunate to be part of Grey Bears. In the end it's the people that volunteer who make our programs work so well. But we don't want to overwork them either. So please consider helping the Brown Bag Program as a volunteer driver and call Pat Brown at 479-1055 to sign up. Left to right: Drivers Bill Scott and Chip Chipman standing in front of our new Grey Bear Van