Working with leftovers

The wife frowns as she peers inside the refrigerator.

“We’re real low on eggs right now,” she says.

Mind you, this refrigerator is not the average 19-cubic-foot Whirlpool with icemaker, though the basement of the Reno-Sparks Gospel Mission’s 33,000-square-foot warehouse does have rows and rows of donated household-sized fridges.

This refrigerator is the size of a small apartment. Its walls are lined with cases of milk, juice and other perishables, most of which have been donated by local grocery stores.

And Jackie Ellison, with her Southern accent, isn’t your average Mrs. Cleaver. She runs an empire that feeds, clothes and provides shelter for hundreds of needy folks in Reno and Sparks.

Busy workers greet the woman they call “Missus E,” mother of five grown children and wife of the Rev. Kaleel Ellison. The woman, looking trim in a dark skirt and tan blazer with coordinating high heels and earrings, moves briskly through her domain. After a stroke two years ago left the Rev. Ellison unable to move the right side of his body, Jackie stepped alongside her husband as co-director of the Reno-Sparks Gospel Mission.

Across from the refrigerator is a 1,040-square-foot walk-in freezer built by workers on staff. Its shelves are lined with frozen baked goods, cheese and such donated delicacies as breaded eggplant cutlets.

Outside the cooling units are stacks of canned food and plastic pallets filled with bread. A large pantry is crammed with more canned or nonperishable food.

Some of these groceries end up distributed to families in need. More ends up on the tables at the Mission’s home on Third Street in downtown Reno. Some is sent off to the Reno Assistance Center, the drop-in emergency shelter for men that RSGM has run on behalf of the city of Reno for nearly two years. (The arrangement doesn’t profit the RSGM financially, but it doesn’t cost them any of the mission’s funds, either.)

Donated food supplemented a meal served Sunday at RSGM’s annual Father’s Day dinner. More will be served at a July 4 party in honor of veterans.

Every day, one of the agency’s trucks makes the rounds of local grocery stores and food-service groups that donate day-old bread or nearly outdated dairy products that would otherwise be discarded. These donations have made it possible for the RSGM to serve nearly 5 million free meals to needy members of the community during the past 40 years.

That’s a lot of breakfasts, lunches and dinners. But Reno is a hungry town. As Jackie tours the upper floor of the warehouse—passing kitchen “bric-a-brac” and a room stuffed to the ceiling with electronics—she’s approached by a worker whose large T-shirt stretches taut over his tummy.

“Are those cupcakes in the break room for everyone?” he asks, patting his abdomen.

“It looks as if you’ve already had your share,” she replies, smiling.

The man called the newspapers sounding dismal. The RSGM had stopped serving breakfasts to the public, and his dad had relied on the program, he said.

For the past five years, free “outsider” breakfasts were served at the Mission to whoever arrived between 5-5:30 a.m. That’s pretty early. And the window of service seemed narrow.

No matter. People woke early and began lining up at 4:30 a.m. to get into the Mission’s dining room. Around 80 people from the community came for breakfast on any given morning. RSGM folk were happy to meet the need while they could afford it.

Now they can’t afford it. Free breakfasts ended last week.

“The crowd was growing, and the funds were dwindling,” Jackie says. “Our cook said, ‘I think we can cut back on some of these food costs if we eliminate the outsider breakfast.’ “

The mission still serves three meals a day to program participants, temporary residents and those living in the mission’s transitional housing. Some meals are still open to the public, like dinners on Sundays and holidays.

But a budget crunch that began in early 2002 has made cutting corners necessary at the RSGM. In the wake of an economic downturn, costs were rising while donations were not. Buying gas for RSGM donation-collecting diesels skyrocketed, as did insurance and workers’ compensation costs. The Ellisons volunteered to take a pay cut. They allowed some staffing positions to be lost to attrition.

Lately, proceeds from the three RSGM-run Thrift Depots across town began dropping, as well. Jackie says that, for example, the earnings at the stores this April were about $9,000 less than they were a year ago in April.

For an organization that’s already fueled by leftovers, that’s a lot of money to go without each month.

The Ellisons came to Reno in 1994, after having run a thriving rescue mission in Jacksonville, Fla., where they’d just seen the completion of construction on a $1.2 million new building.

Kaleel, a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary, had been the former pastor of a small church in Florida and the director of the Jacksonville mission. Along the way, he’d also worked at a bank and as a substitute teacher. At each job, he learned skills that he’s put to use in work with assisting the needy.

“God takes all those kinds to help you with other things,” Jackie explains. She sits at a conference table in a room that doubles as a computer training facility. Here, individuals in the third phase of the RSGM’s year-long, Christian-based recovery program learn useful computer skills. At the head of the table sits Kaleel, who lets his wife do most of the talking, though the stroke did not diminish his mental acuity at all, Jackie says.

Moving to Reno was like stepping back in time 20 years. The RSGM building for homeless men on Third Street was a far cry from the new building they’d overseen in Florida, which had also boasted of services for women and children. Kaleel didn’t seem to mind, Jackie recalls.

“He likes a challenge,” she says. “I thought God was playing a joke on us—to come from the Bible Belt out here to Reno.”

Now she enjoys the climate and the people. The gambling culture adds another dimension to the rescue mission’s work.

“That’s so addictive,” she says. “One of the things we teach in our program is how you can have control over your life.”

The Ellisons are hopeful about the Reno City Council’s approval—at long last—of a site on which a permanent homeless shelter can be built, although even that “final” approval seems to be up for debate (See “Ever-shifting Shelter Site,” next page). The facility approved to be built on a 38,000-square-foot lot on Sage Street will include a 150-bed men’s drop-in shelter and meals facility in its first phase. A shelter for women and children will be added in the future. Last week, Jackie attended a meeting of the Reno Area Alliance for the Homeless, where she continues to offer input on the planning and design of the new center. The RSGM will run the emergency shelter at the new facility.

The site was controversial. Many local home and business owners don’t recognize the need for homeless services.

“It’s not warehousing people,” Ellison says. “It’s about giving people long-term help.”

The work can be exhausting and full of heartbreak, but it has rewards.

“You have a lot of failures along the way," Jackie says. "But you have some who make it. Seeing folks make it gives us gas in our tanks. … It’s always been a part of our life to reach out to other people at the bottom, lift them up and give them some hope."