Windber woman helps provide food for low-income children

Donna LaMonaca of Windber has been a volunteer at the Saint Vincent de Paul Family Kitchen in the Altoona-Johnstown area since she was a child. When they called her last month to say they weren’t able to distribute all of the donated milk they had on hand, she got an idea.

“We decided to suit up in masks and gloves and take the milk to where there would be a lot of kids in need,” LaMonaca said. “So we went to a low-income housing unit with a simple sign: ‘Free milk.’”

Thirty minutes later, hundreds of cartons of milk were gone.

A few days later, back at the Family Kitchen, a young boy came through the serving line alone and requested several meals to go.

“We loaded him up and he attached them to his bicycle and rode off,” LaMonaca said. “When he came back the next day, I asked him where he was going, and he said he was handing out the lunches to his friends.”

LaMonaca, a Transportation Safety Administration supervisor at the Johnstown-Cambria County Airport, knew what she needed to do. She told the boy she would meet him the next day at the same housing unit where she’d distributed milk.

“I brought whatever I could get my hands on,” she said, taking 15 prepared lunches and returning several days in a row as the group who met her continued to grow.

She began buying pizza and fast food to bring. She contacted local businesses to donate food.

Her 12-year-old son brought his piggy bank to her one day with money he’d been saving for an Xbox, and told her he’d rather use it to make Easter baskets for children who didn’t have them.

The LaMonaca family ended up making 20 Easter baskets as well as 50 complete dinners with ham, rigatoni, sweet potatoes and green beans to distribute.

“What amazed me was how many young kids were walking around alone or in groups of just kids,” LaMonaca said. “I had a hard time sleeping that night. Because all I could think about was those kids, what their situations were, where their parents were, and if they would get meals since they couldn’t go to school.”

For her birthday on May 3, LaMonaca asked friends to consider donating money to help buy single-serving Pizza Hut pizzas, and received enough to buy 250 of them.

“Hopefully when our community opens up after the pandemic eases, community programs will reopen and make sure a meal is provided,” she said. “But for now, we’ll continue to do what we’re doing to get the kids fed.”