The mother of two teenagers is on the go \u201cnonstop\u201d from 1 a.m. until 7 or 8 p.m.<\/p>\n
In that span she works the early shift at the San Diego International Airport as an agent with the Transportation Security Administration, then picks up her children from school and drives them to their after-school sports practices, then takes care of the rest of the adulting as a single mother of two.<\/p>\n
The worker, who didn\u2019t want her name used because she was not authorized to speak with reporters, has been doing this all without a paycheck, because a partial federal shutdown has halted funding to the agency that employs her, the Department of Homeland Security. Her last paycheck of around $500, which she said was half of what she usually takes home due to insurance and other deductions, landed Feb. 14.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have teenagers. And they eat a lot,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She has made it work, for now. \u201cBut to be honest, the next couple of weeks, it\u2019s going to be a stretch.\u201d<\/p>\n
The worker stopped by the airport\u2019s employee parking lot on Thursday to pick up food at a distribution hosted by Feeding San Diego, a food rescue nonprofit that gives San Diegans nutritious pantry items and fresh produce, in partnership with the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority.<\/p>\n
The nonprofit is handing out food to federal workers who have been unpaid for weeks due to the partial government shutdown that began Feb. 14 after Democrats and Republicans in Congress failed to agree on reforms in the wake of immigration enforcement actions in Minneapolis that resulted in the deaths of two U.S. citizens in January, Renee Good and Alex Pretti.<\/p>\n
Under orange tents that shaded the goods from the steady midday sun, the nonprofit\u2019s workers and airport volunteers had set up bags of fruit, large heads of crispy cabbage, cartons of strawberries and other fresh produce, ready for on-the-go pickup between noon and four that afternoon.<\/p>\n
Dry goods included Kirkland brand canned chicken breast, spaghetti, enriched rice, a bag of dry beans, four cans of tuna, low sodium vegetable soup, rolled oats and a family-sized bag of multigrain cereal.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re showing up to work, they\u2019re not being paid,\u201d said Carissa Casares, the nonprofit\u2019s director of communications and content. \u201cThey\u2019re doing the right thing. They\u2019re not asking for a handout.\u201d<\/p>\n
Casares said Feeding San Diego set up the distribution point to meet a dire need among federal workers. The nonprofit last week also dropped off food at a TSA office in Liberty Station, Casares added.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had some TSA employees come through already,\u201d she said, \u201cand there\u2019s a lot of, \u2018I\u2019m hanging in there,\u2019 or \u2018This is really hard.\u2019 And a lot of thank you\u2019s. \u2018Thank you for being here. I really appreciate this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Casares said the lengthy shutdown last fall set the framework for food distribution now \u2014 by allowing the nonprofit to make connections with federal agencies with impacted workers then, and again now.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis shows that we\u2019re a trusted nonprofit, that we\u2019ve earned that reputation in the community as an emergency response organization. And that when there is a need, we can be that source,\u201d Casares said.<\/p>\n
The TSA worker, who is 48 and has worked at the agency for more than 20 years, left with strawberries, oranges, beans, rice and a head of cabbage. \u201cStaple foods that we need,\u201d she said. This was her first time at a food distribution event, adding, \u201cEvery little thing helps.\u201d<\/p>\n
The children\u2019s father, she said, \u201cdoesn\u2019t help at all, so I\u2019m doing this by myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
To make ends meet with no income and three mouths in her household, the worker has been tapping credit cards.<\/p>\n
\u201cLuckily, I have good credit,\u201d she said. She tried not to use the cards, but \u201cin this situation, you know, I don\u2019t have a choice.\u201d<\/p>\n
She also tapped her emergency fund and so far has been able to keep up on rent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is their fourth shutdown,\u201d the worker said, thinking about her teenage children.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I get paid, I\u2019m going to have to pay that back, and then just try, little by little, to try to get my credit cards paid off. And then try to reintroduce my savings,\u201d she said.\n<\/p>\n
She has been thinking about looking for a new job \u2014 maybe with a hospital \u2014 because government jobs are no longer secure, she said.<\/p>\n
To other workers, she strongly recommended building up an emergency fund. She had a different message for the nation\u2019s lawmakers.<\/p>\n
\u201c(They\u2019re) fighting like children. They need to work together,\u201d she said. \u201cWe put them in there so they can do their job. If they can\u2019t do their job, then there\u2019s no reason for them to be there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The mother of two teenagers is on the go \u201cnonstop\u201d from 1 a.m. until 7 or 8 p.m.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":239403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[387,181,74,76,75,1696],"class_list":{"0":"post-239402","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-latest-headlines","10":"tag-san-diego","11":"tag-san-diego-headlines","12":"tag-san-diego-news","13":"tag-top-stories-sdut"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}