ELK, Wash. – Valerie and Peter Woelk have volunteered at the North County Food Pantry for two years. When the Oregon Road Fire broke out, they, like many others, lost their home and knew they were needed back at work.
The couple said they only had twenty minutes to evacuate their home, but even in moments of panic, thinking of others was on their mind.
“The night we got evacuated, I grabbed all the soups off the shelf, the canning in the pantry and put them in a cooler and took it to the church, had them unload it, and started cooking for the fire department,” said Valerie.
Valerie cooked for first responders for hours the night they had to evacuate before returning to her home to find decades’ worth of memories gone. But her husband Peter says they are some of the lucky ones.
“We had a place to go; we were able to move and were warm and comfortable; some of these people don’t,” said Peter.
This is why the couple says it was so important for them to go back to the pantry and volunteer the next day, “You’ve got a community here, you’ve got people going through the same thing as we are, but they don’t know where to go or what to do.”
Sandy Harvey, the Director of North County Food Pantry, says the Woelk’s dedication to the community speaks to the kind of town Elk is, “It’s unbelievable, it’s astounding, that somebody could be that giving and supportive, that’s really going above and beyond.”
But Peter says their response is not uncommon in Elk; it is simply just what they do, “This is a community. We rely on ourselves. We don’t have a mayor, but we have a neighbor. So, if I need help, I go to my neighbor.”
If you would like to donate food to the North County Food Pantry, you can drop items off at 40015 N Collins Rd, Elk, WA, and if you would like to volunteer, you can contact them at ncfpantry@gmail.com
