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Blessed to give Jenn Holden of Woodside knows about hunger, and what to do about it
By Barbara Wood Special to the Almanac
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t’s a little after 10 on Friday morning when the little white truck with the words on its side, “Angel Food — Good Deeds Delivered,” pulls up to Hoover School in Redwood City. Before Jenn Holden of Woodside — who everyone describes as Angel Food’s angel — has finished parking, a group of women appear to unload the food crammed into every nook and cranny of the former Moffett Field utility vehicle. They pull out fresh fruit and vegetables, cereal, butter, yogurt, milk and cheese, bread, beans, crackers, soup, canned goods, rice, tortillas, eggs, cooking oil, lunch meat and more. Inside the Hoover Family Center, the contents of the tiny truck seem to expand to fill an entire room. Accompanied by Spanish Christmas music, the women quickly divide large packages of food into smaller ones, and start filling bags with food for 15 families. The food is designed to help the families get through the weekend, when the free school meals their children usually rely on are not available.
In the meantime, John Holden arrives in the Hoover parking lot to pick up 20 bagged lunches his wife put together that morning in the Redwood City commercial kitchen of Encore Catering, where she rents space. The bags go to the East Palo Alto Academy, a charter public high school in Menlo Park, to supplement the students’ weekend food. The bags are discreetly handed out by coaches and teachers. Tanuja Bali, from Los Altos, is also in the Hoover parking lot, her car loaded with homebaked goodies and whole-wheat sandwiches she has prepared. They will go into the bag lunches and into food bags Ms. Holden hands out to homeless people, plus serve as dessert for the communal Saturday lunch Angel Food provides for a group at the Riekes Center in Menlo Park. Angel Food is only three months old, but it is something Jenn Holden has spent decades preparing for. Born in San Francisco, and living on the Midpeninsula since 1982, she knows about food from working in local restaurants including Nina’s Cafe, the Skywood Chateau and Iberia. She spent three years as manager at
Supes reject Stanford’s $10.4 million trail offer By Dave Boyce Almanac Staff Writer
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he vote was not unanimous as in 2006 and 2010, but the outcome was the same: the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors rejected, on a vote of 3-2, an inflationadjusted offer of $10.4 million from Stanford University to upgrade a deteriorating asphalt path along Alpine Road into a two-way multi-use trail from Portola Valley into Menlo Park and the university. The decision by supervisors Adrienne Tissier and Rose Jacobs Gibson and board President Carole Groom was welcome to a large majority of residents in Stanford Weekend Acres, which sits along a maddeningly com-
Almanac photo by Michelle Le
Jenn Holden is embraced by Maria, while Maria’s son Kevin, right, helps decorate lunch boxes.
Bucks restaurant in Woodside, where owner Jamis MacNiven introduced her to her husband, John. She also knows those who need food, from working as assistant manager of a Redwood City homeless shelter (a job she says she got after writing about “my days as a homeless runaway at 15”), as a food program manager for Samaritan House serving more than 300 meals a day, and as a case manager at Urban Ministry in Palo Alto.
See TRAIL, page 8
see a real need here at home, and right down the road.” The food she provides “is given discreetly and with dignity,” she says. At Hoover, the 15 families in the program call it “Bolsitas de Amor” or bags of love. Ms. Holden worked out the program with the families and Jana Kiser, Hoover’s community school coordinator. Each family takes part for only four months, See ANGEL, page 8
Manager back in town, but how long? By Renee Batti Almanac News Editor
plicated and heavily traveled mile and a half of public rightof-way. Supervisors Dave Pine and Don Horsley, who voted to accept the offer to study various trail designs with the option to build one at Stanford’s expense, had support from many residents in Ladera. The right-ofway past Ladera is smooth, flat and wide by comparison. The board faced a Dec. 31 deadline, after which Stanford’s offer expires. University spokesman Larry Horton, when questioned on the school’s motives for funding a trail in a neighboring county, has always cited an agreement with Santa Clara
“I knew hunger and neglect when I was young,” she says, “and people’s shame in admitting to being hungry resonates with me.” In India, she helped women set up a small business embroidering jeans and, most recently, she and John spent parts of the past four years in Guatemala working in hospitals and cooking for locals. “I have seen people hungry and tried to help in India and Guatemala,” she says. “Now I
J
ohn Danielson, Atherton’s interim city manager since Jan. 3, is back in town and partially back on the job after suffering a medical emergency while out of the state in midNovember. But Interim Police Chief Ed Flint is still the town’s acting city manager, and Mr. Danielson’s future in Town Hall is uncertain. Mr. Danielson’s contract is set to expire Jan. 2, and no permanent manager is in sight. But because he receives retirement benefits from the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), Mr. Danielson is legally prohibited from working for a single employer for more than
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one year — and even during that year, the permitted number of work hours is limited. The City Council is set to appeal to CalPERS for an extension to allow Mr. Danielson to work up to 960 more hours over the course of the next 12 months, if necessary. A draft letter to CalPERS that the council will be asked to approve at its Dec. 21 meeting says that the extension is needed to allow Mr. Danielson to finish “a reformation of the Town’s operations in a way that will hopefully lead us from the brink of financial catastrophe.” It adds: “It would be a substantial blow to this work in progress if he were forced
to leave at the present time.” In addition to helping the town find a permanent manager, Mr. Danielson is needed to fill staff positions now held by interim employees, including those of police chief, public works director, and finance director, the letter argues. The letter also cites Mr. Danielson’s “serious medical problem that required surgical intervention in November, cutting short his availability to perform his important duties as outlined above for much of the final two months of this year.” Mayor Jim Dobbie told the Almanac that Mr. Danielson, who is paid $15,000 per month without benefits from the Continued on next page
December 21, 2011 N The Almanac N 5