By Alex Flood for Sootoday
A disappointing start to the week for Harvest Algoma has taken a positive turn this afternoon.
This past Monday, staff members with the food resource hub discovered the handle on the back door of their cargo van had been ripped off the vehicle at some point during the night. The attempted break-in left the skin of the van and parts of the outside sheet metal in a dire enough state where a complete replacement of the door would be required.
Realizing they wouldn’t be able to afford the cost to fix it, Harvest Algoma took to social media on Wednesday and requested the public’s assistance. Hours later, a pair of local automotive services — NAPA Auto Parts and Lakeway Truck Centre — stepped in to help them out.
“NAPA found and ordered a new door for us, and they’re going to replace it for free.” said Lauren Moran, Harvest Algoma’s community enterprise manager. “They’ve been great for us.” Casey Davieaux, the owner at NAPA, told SooToday he called Rita Varco, who owns Lakeway Truck Centre, to determine if they had the replacement part available.
“They’re a salvage yard too, and they found that door we can just replace completely,” he said. “They wanted to help out too, so they agreed to go halves with me on it, and we’re going to get one of my guys here to change the door for them and get them rolling again.”
Located just around the corner from Harvest Algoma, the specialists at NAPA are no stranger to helping out their neighbours. “We actually had our catalytic converter stolen a couple years ago, and they replaced that too,” Moran recalled. “They also welded a cage around it to prevent it from happening again. They’ve been really awesome partners in terms of our vehicles getting repeatedly vandalized.”
For Davieaux, helping out the food resource centre wasn’t even a question. “Nobody wants to see them go through that,” he said. “I’m thrilled with what they do for us in our community. Anything we can do to help them makes me feel better.”
Launched in 2018, Harvest Algoma provides much-needed food to area shelters, food banks and other front-line organizations. Their cargo van is the key to the resource’s operation as the vehicle is responsible for transferring around 75 per cent of all the food they handle.
The van is most notably used for deliveries to the Community Resource Centre and pick-ups from partnering grocery stores, while their food rescue initiative and Every Breakfast Counts program both rely on the big set of wheels. “We would not be able to do what we do without that van,” Moran said. “It really worked out that NAPA managed to find the part for it.”
Harvest Algoma’s social media post made its way to a number of groups on Facebook, including Keeping the Soo Safe where Moran was disappointed to read some of the comments regarding the person who was responsible for the damage. “People have a real lack of sympathy for folks in that situation, and we try to be as non-judgemental about it as possible,” she said. “When you’re in a society where you pay money to have your basic needs met, not everybody is going to have that money, and they’re going to take other routes in order to get those needs met.”
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