Needles was founded in 1883 alongside the beautiful Colorado River. They have the train, the freeway and Route 66. Heck even Spike, Snoopy’s brother is from Needles. However, they are and have been missing a critical piece in their community for a while now.
With a median income of just around $38,000 a year and only about 5,000 people in this little city it has been a struggle for businesses to stay.
There are only two stores with “food” for sale the Dollar General which doesn’t have any fresh produce and a small convenience store that sells a very limited amount of produce and some frozen meat. The people are struggling and it impacts their health.
Thankfully there is one food bank in town Firehouse Ministries. They get their food from St. Mary’s Food Bank and Bullhead Regional Food Bank. However, it doesn’t come close to meeting the needs of the community.
Tri-State Community Healthcare is a non-profit clinic in Needles and has been providing healthcare for the past 12 years to anyone regardless if they have insurance or not. They saw the huge need for fresh produce and more healthy nutrition for their patients.
They reached out to the Inland Empire Health Plan (IEHP) who partners with Food Forward and for the past year almost they have been delivering semi’s full of fresh healthy produce. These are not scheduled and we are only given about 12 hours notice that a semi will be delivered.
This brings us to the missing piece. Even though we could get the food, we needed to depend on outside businesses to unload it and they needed to bring their forklift and someone to operate it the 20 miles from Bullhead, not to mention they needed to be available at 4:30 AM to unload the truck.
We needed our own FORKLIFT. They run around $30,000 or more. Several companies like Tri-State Equipment Rental, Bullhead Regional Foodbank and Redmond Construction have helped unload the trucks in the past and saw the huge impact it has had on the community. One of these companies saw the need and did something about it.
Directly behind the Tri-State Community Healthcare clinic is St Vincent De Paul’s they do a lot for the community and just finished this brand new cement slab and covering for the back of their building.
Butch Redmond donated a forklift!! St. Vincents’ can use it during the month and a driver from St Vincent’s will operate it for Tri-State Community Healthcare whenever we get a Semi full of fresh produce for the community!
The impact of this one donation is HUGE. It will have a lasting physical and emotional impact on the community. This is a beautiful example of multiple organizations working together to help serve people in need. Thank you Butch for your generosity to help others in need.
Here is a video from one of our distributions https://www.facebook.com/share/r/WbfUicP3xGAmXucN/?mibextid=WC7FNe
Posts will be made about upcoming FREE food distributions at 820 W Broadway in Needles, CA on the Tri-State Community Healthcare Facebook page. It will also be shared to the Make Bullhead Better Facebook page. Everyone is welcome to come to these food distributions you do not have to be from Needles or a patient of Tri-State.
There is NO schedule for these distributions. We get them as they become available. Special thanks to the City of Needles who helps with any trash that’s left over at the end of these distributions.
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