Community activist has collected 15K pounds of food over four years

Retired U.S. postal worker Wade Cook spent years helping collect food for the postal service’s annual food drive, and didn’t want his involvement to fizzle with his retirement.

“When I moved down here in 2001, I noticed the post office down here didn’t do it... I just thought what a waste,” Cook said. “We have these offices and no one is doing it. So I talked to my wife and I talked to the board here at Indigo Creek and I asked their permission if I could run one and they said go do it.”

The postal service said carriers participate in the food drive on a voluntary basis, and carriers may not have coordinated an effort in Cook’s area at that time.

Cook is a community activist who rounds up nine volunteers and their spouses every October to collect food for the South Strand Helping Hand.

“They can’t wait to do it,” Cook said of the volunteers. “All these guys look forward to doing it. They just can’t believe how much we can collect.”

This year, Cook and his crew collected 4,000 pounds of food, bringing their four-year total to about 15,000 pounds.

He said residents of the 601 properties in Indigo Creek bring a variety of non-perishable items, from peanut butter and jelly to tuna fish and beef stew.

Susan Alexander, director of South Strand Helping Hand, said Cook’s October collection hits their food pantry at a time of need.

“When he does his food drive, he hits us at one of the spots when we’re really wiped out,” Alexander said. “We might not have anything on the shelves. So he’s a godsend.”

Cook plans to present how he runs his program to the Greater Burgess Community Association in January. The association represents more than 30 developments in the Burgess community in southern Horry County – the county’s second largest unincorporated area behind Carolina Forest.

“My thought was, when I first did it, if we could get more communities down here to do it than just us, that would be great because the food goes so fast,” Cook said. “People don’t realize how many people don’t have food. Here we are having these big turkeys and big dinners and here these people don’t have anything.

“If we can get more communities to do this, it would be tremendous.”

This story was originally published December 23, 2014 at 6:04 AM with the headline "Community activist has collected 15K pounds of food over four years."