Students help feed the masses

COEUR d'ALENE - Deanne Clifford stood in Lake City High School's commons area Wednesday. The principal smiled at the line of teens snaking around the lunch tables.

The high school students came bearing bags and boxes full of non-perishable food items and clothing. There were kids holding cash, others had armfuls of cell phones. Some lugged frozen turkeys as they waited in line to hand over the donated goods.

"It's always so amazing to me that the kids who have the least give the most," Clifford said.

It was the final day of a long-standing Lake City tradition, the annual school-wide food drive to support Kootenai County residents in need. This year's drive is the school's 29th. Each year, the collective giving begins about a week before Thanksgiving with students lining up each morning at the start of first period. They hand over their class' donations to be tabulated and credited to their class.

Morgan Heglie, a freshman, stood next to her classmate who held a handful of cell phones. She said on Tuesday she handed over seven old phones family members and friends had retired and tucked away in drawers.

"We have competition between classes," said 10th-grade student Ashlee Harris, as she waited with a bag of cans that would be weighed at a table outside the school's auditorium.

Some boys hoisted a large laundry basket full of cans and boxes of pasta onto the table where it would be weighed. It came in at 55 pounds.

"Here comes Troxell," said teacher and food drive adviser Russ Blank, as a group of boys in gym clothes approached the table, their arms laden with cans. "They're coming in with their late bid."

The "big battle" this year, to be the class that turns over the most donations, is between head football coach Van Troxell's students and frosh football coach Joe Partington's kids, Blank said.

This year's drive is being sponsored and run by the school's DECA students. DECA (Distributive Education Clubs of America) is a national organization for students interested in careers in marketing and business, and Blank is the school's DECA adviser.

"These guys are awesome," Blank said, glancing over at his students as they counted crumpled bills, change and checks and placed food items on a scale. "They're going to write this up as a community service project and take it to the competition."

DECA student Taneya Clem, 17, said that as of Tuesday afternoon they had collected about $2,500 in cash, 3,000 pounds of food and about 200 cell phones.

It's the high school senior's first year of involvement with the drive.

"I didn't actually expect it. It's been so good, how they've stepped up," Clem said.