The news was good. A five-year Care and Share Food Bank program, now two years in, could make food available to 100 percent of all southern Colorado residents by 2018. Although there are still hungry, food-insecure people in southern counties, including El Paso, they are fewer than ever.

The program is realistically named “Within Reach” and calls for distributing 25.1 million pounds of food by 2018, up from more than 19 million pounds currently for 108,000 people.

The food bank’s top executive, Lynne Telford, shared her enthusiasm and the numbers with a record-breaking crowd of more than 1,000 people at the Recipe for Hope fundraising luncheon March 5 at Broadmoor Hall. More than $206,000 was raised to help provide 1.8 million meals.

The mantra, said Telford, is “More food. To more people. In more places.” She added, “It is not fair or right that some of our neighbors don’t get enough food.”

Stunning the audience and bringing many to tears was local businesswoman Jenny Bealis-Schell, who with husband Chris makes up the graphic arts team Design Rangers. A woman who had seen Jenny in the ladies room practicing her script stereotyped that she was a well-heeled, well-dressed donor wanting to persuade others to give more.

Bealis-Schell and her husband do indeed help many local nonprofits but no one was prepared for her to say, “I’ve been there. I’ve been cold. I’ve been hungry.”

Bealis-Schell grew up with a newly single mom “off the grid” in a ghost town cabin outside Victor. An outhouse, no electricity, water from spigots outside Victor City Hall, meals from grocery dumpsters. In fun, she and her mom took turns being the mayor of the ghost town.

“How did I get from that little ghost town to this stage?” Bealis-Schell queried. “Because of people who reached out to me and my mom.” Thanksgiving meals shared, extra food, clothing. They were people from the Gold Camp area: Brian and Rosemary Hayes, Connie and Norbie Larsen, Tom and Ginger Kuhlsmann and Jim and Patty Jennings, she said. “Giving in any form makes the dark days brighter,” she shared.

Emcee Dianne Derby of KKTV said Jenny was indicative of “the importance of not judging someone you meet the first time.” To Derby, the Schells were the career couple with the prettiest house in their neighborhood. Little did she know about how hard they had worked to make that happen over time.

Patrice Ravenscroft, also a young businesswoman, turned her story of being hungry into poetry: “Can you see me?” she asked. “Hunger is me. Hunger is here. Hunger is all around us.” It could be caused by a job layoff, medical bills or just one missed mortgage payment, she said. It’s a completely bare refrigerator. It’s children dreading summer because there are no backpack meals to bring home from school for the family.

Jana Matlack told how she and her little brother had made it on their own growing up and then she was providing for two sons. When she went to college there were always “gaps in our pantry. I couldn’t even provide fresh apples for my kids.” But she wanted to better herself and to be home to tuck “my babies” in at night, so they survived with help from the Pueblo Community College Panther Pantry, which receives food from Care and Share.

The Care and Share board headed by Jim Hendren includes Michael Ruebenson, Betsy Sobral, Cathy Brown, Midori Clark from Pueblo, Edward Gleason, Garry Hill, Holly Kortum, Trevor Miller, Wendy Pelton, Steve Schneider, Dan Steever, Wynona Sullivan, Peter A. Vujcich, Brandy Williams and Telford.