Shelter in need of donations after losing almost all of its stock
POCOMOKE, Md. – The Samaritan Shelter in Pocomoke feeds dozens of locals daily, hundreds of others twice a week at their soup kitchen, and hundreds of families more weekly with their pantry. Thursday, the shelter announced, via Facebook, that it had lost $30,000 worth of frozen food after its walk in freezer broke down and a freezer trailer it ordered failed.
Shelly Daniels, the shelter’s director, tells us the food lost makes up about 95 percent of what they had. And now, for the time being, cut backs are necessary.
“We are definitely cutting our, who we’re able to serve right now, unfortunately, because we need to make sure until we can get our freezer restocked that we have enough food to feed the homeless people that actually stay here at the shelter… Next week if we don’t get more food in our freezer, we may still have yo cut our soup kitchen.”
And locals are already feeling the effects of a community without a food shelter for those in need.
“We had a family come today, she had four children dropped off at her house,” said Daniels. “And she says this woman just dropped her four kids with me I need food, we couldn’t even give her any meat.”
The only positive is the fact that kids are now back to school.
“Yes, that does help. Because we don’t have to worry about the kids. At least the kids are being fed at school,” said Daniels.
The troubles began three weeks ago, when the shelters walk in freezer failed. They then rented a freezer trailer, that also had issues.
“We called them, the gentleman on call did not want to come out and fix the trailer. He was very hesitant, and when the gentleman that spoke to him said there is frozen food on this trailer something needs to be done right now he finally came out,” said Daniels.
Daniels tells us one small problem that wasn’t caught led to a dumpster full of raw meats.
“Come to find out the bulkhead was never removed from the trailer when we got it. So from day one we were messed up.”
As of now the shelter is storing its meats and frozen items in these three door freezers. They hope to have their walk in freezer up and running by Friday.
The shelter is in desperate need of donations. You can drop food of to their location, or send monetary donations to P.O. Box 661, Pocomoke City, Maryland, 21851.
We’re told there will also be a bake sale this Saturday at the Enchanted Florist in Pocomoke from 9 AM to 3 PM.
