Anabel Sarco found out she was pregnant with her son, Anthony, in February 2020 – just a month before life changed as we all knew it.
With so much unknown, the 35-year-old Cicero resident spent those early months of the pandemic staying home and away from others. “Especially being pregnant, you don’t want to do anything because you don’t want to risk yourself, you don’t want to risk the baby,” she said. Sarco left her warehouse job to care for Anthony, now five months, and her 10-year-old Angel. Her husband still works as a store manager. On a sunny April afternoon, Sarco and her boys stopped by Angel’s school, Cicero West Elementary, to pick up some food from its Healthy Student Market. In partnership with the Food Depository, the school-run program provides free groceries, including fresh fruits and vegetables, to families.
Anabel Sarco and her sons, Anthony (center) and Angel. (Photos by Mateo Zapata for the Food Depository).
(From left) Cicero West Assistant Principal Alejandra Reyes, Principal Veronica Morales, and Cicero East Principal Jill Miller. Together, the three run the Cicero West/East joint Healthy Student Market.
“It’s important – now more than ever,” Morales said.
‘Now more than ever’
In addition to the markets, district staff have also organized regular breakfast and lunch pickups at 16 of the district’s school sites, a bimonthly mobile food pantry, and benefits outreach to connect to parents to needed services like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. “Food is comfort,” said Jan Wolff, Cicero School District’s food service director, who has overseen the breakfast and lunch pickups since the school shifted to e-learning in March 2020. “And in this pandemic, we’ve all needed some kind of comfort.” The free food is also a necessity for many of the school district’s families who were hit hard by the local business closures and layoffs. The district, which enrolls approximately 11,000 students, is a part of the USDA’s Community Eligibility Provision – a program that allows districts serving low-income areas to offer breakfast and lunch at no cost to students. Prior to the pandemic, nearly 90% of the district’s students participated in the free lunch program, Wolff said. Principal Miller, who helps oversee the Cicero West/East Healthy Student Market, has also heard of the need from her own students. “When students start exiting the (all-school morning Zoom) meeting to go to class, there will be some students that stay on and ask, ‘Do you know what they’re getting this week? We have nothing in the cabinet.’” Miller explained. “They’re counting on this food.” In the early months of the pandemic, Wolff’s breakfast and lunch distributions – which take place twice a week – were serving between 8,000 to 9,000 meals per distribution. Nowadays, they serve closer to 2,500 meals every Monday and Wednesday. The most significant drop in pick-ups came in April after parents received their benefits from Pandemic-EBT, a federal program to financially support families whose kids would have otherwise received free meals at school.
For the past year, staff at the Cicero School District have distributed free breakfasts and lunches for students. (Photo courtesy Jan Wolff)
“We just want to ease that fear among our community members,” Wolff said. “We just want to be something stable that they can count on.”
Being ‘the seed’
Reflecting on what this past year has felt like for her and her family, Leticia Carmona described it as an “equation of cinematic arts.” “‘50 First Dates,’ plus ‘Groundhog Day,’ multiplied by a terrible episode of the ‘Twilight Zone,’’ she said with a laugh. A sense of humor, she said, has helped her and her family get through the highs and the lows of the pandemic. Carmona, 43, is a mother of four, ranging in ages from 10 to 17. Her youngest is a fourth grader at Cicero East.
Leticia Carmona and her sons, Sergio (left) and Carlos (right).
