Cpl Craig Douglass and organizer Beverly Livingstone outside the Spruceland Save-On-Food store Saturday. Photo 250News

Prince George, B.C. – The people of Prince George, some wearing their RCMP work clothes, others in their shopping duds, displayed an enormous amount of generosity toward the senior citizens of our city on Saturday.

RCMP officers, detachment staff and volunteers hosted a Pack-A-PC drive outside the four Save-On-Foods stores, asking residents to drop a non-perishable food item or two into police cars parked outside the stores with all donations, including money, going to the Prince George Council of Seniors.

The idea came from Beverly Livingstone, a City employee who works at the RCMP detachment.  “I was online one day,” she says “and had seen something about Pack-A-PC from somebody in Houston, and they said that they do six PCs a year.  So I thought, well we’ve got four Save-Ons, we can do at least twelve.  So I put the idea to the officers in charge and they were right gung-ho with it.”

Livingstone says “we hope to make this a yearly event, this is our first time doing it here.  We usually just collect at the detachment amongst ourselves but we thought it would be nice to have some public input and positive interaction with the RCMP instead of the negative interaction.  It’s a great community thing and it’s dear to a lot of our hearts so, this is where we are.”

She also says Save-On-Foods jumped on board.  “They were great.  When I mentioned it to them they had their weekly meeting and got back to me and said yes, we’re on board, we’re on board.  And they had everything set up and ready for us to go when we got here at 9 o’clock (Saturday morning).  They posted pictures and lists (of suggested donation items) inside the store for us, they supplied the extra food and everything that’s out there for the people to buy and donate, and they’re just great.”

The food drive ran from 9 am to 3 pm Saturday and everything that was collected was taken down to the detachment.  For those who couldn’t donate Saturday but would like to, Livingstone says “we’re going to put baskets at the detachment on Victoria Street for people to be able to donate through the coming week, and then on Monday, Dec. 12th we’re going to deliver it all to the Seniors Council.”

She says it will be up to the council to distribute the items.  “we just leave it up to them to disburse as they need to disburse.  Lots of people have done donations of cash and gift cards, and so if people want or need specific things then they are able to purchase those things for them.  You know, like special gluten-free stuff, sugar-free stuff, any of that kind of stuff.”

Livingstone says many seniors find themselves in pretty tight straits and “that’s what generates this, especially at Christmas because everybody deserves a good time, a good meal, a good memory.  And at this time of year is when things are really tough for everybody, so it’s just our way of helping out.”

The detachment’s Media Relations officer, Cpl. Craig Douglass, says the generosity displayed by the community yesterday was impressive.  He says while he was at one Save-On store he had people come out with a shopping cart full of groceries and they donated it all to the effort.  Douglass says “they weren’t even there to shop for themselves, it was all to donate to the seniors.”  He says he also saw people putting $100 gift cards into the donation box.  Douglass says “it really was phenomenal and I’ve got lots of stories just like that.”

He says he would guess that at least 20 police cars were filled with non-perishable food items on Saturday and donations are still being taken for another week, all to benefit our senior citizens.