Canned: Explorers clear shelves

Last Tues­day after­noon, bed­lam ensued at the Ober­lin IGA as young peo­ple ran up and down aisles of the store fill­ing shop­ping carts with canned goods for three minutes.

No, the police weren’t called. In fact, the young peo­ple were part of the Ober­lin Police Explorer Post 478, and were tak­ing part in the Rotary Club of Oberlin’s annual shop­ping spree in the store.

City man­ager Eric Noren­berg, and his wife Kaye, won the shop­ping spree at the Rotary’s fundrais­ing auc­tion in Octo­ber. The Noren­bergs decided to donate every­thing col­lected dur­ing the three-minute spree to Ober­lin Com­mu­nity Ser­vices (OCS), an orga­ni­za­tion that offers a wide array of ser­vices to low-income cit­i­zens of Ober­lin and South­ern Lorain County.

“It was kind of a spur of the moment. We didn’t plan on bid­ding on the shop­ping spree, but in the excite­ment of the moment, and the moti­va­tion to help OCS, it seemed like the right thing to do,” Eric Noren­berg said. “When my wife came over and saw that I was bid­ding, she said, ‘What are you bid­ding on?’ I told her it was for OCS, and she said, ‘OK, bid higher.’”

Linda Arbor­gast, direc­tor of OCS, pro­vided Eric Noren­berg with a list of items the OCS pantry was in need of. The Noren­bergs then pro­vided the list to the Explor­ers to give them an idea of where to con­cen­trate their efforts dur­ing the three-minute excursion.

“It’s a lot of excite­ment and a lot of fun,” said Ober­lin IGA owner Dave Kaltenbach. “You see these kids run­ning around for three min­utes and see­ing how many dol­lars they can get in their cart, it really is fun.”

Accord­ing to the cash reg­is­ter tape, the Explor­ers were able to grab exactly 500 cans total­ing $629.64.

Bil­lie Nead­ham, of the Ober­lin Police Depart­ment and the direc­tor of the Explor­ers pro­gram, said the young men and women were excited to be involved with the shop­ping spree.

“They were very excited. They like get­ting out and help­ing the com­mu­nity. When they heard it was a com­pe­ti­tion, they were really enthused,” he said. “They enjoy being involved in any­thing competitive.”

Nead­ham also said the Explor­ers were happy they were able to col­lect more cans within the three min­utes this year than the group that par­tic­i­pated at last year’s event.

Arbo­gast was thrilled to receive the dona­tion of canned goods from the Norenbergs.

“We are greatly appre­cia­tive. Eric and Kaye have always been per­sonal donors, and this dona­tion only adds to what they’ve already done,” she said.

The dona­tion of the shop­ping spree comes at a time when OCS needs all the help they can get due to an all-time high in demand from the community.

“It’s a chal­lenge (for OCS) because more peo­ple need help, and some of the donors that have been able to help them in the past aren’t able to do as much finan­cially this year,” Eric Noren­berg said. “When­ever some­one has the oppor­tu­nity to help, it’s very appreciated.”

“The demand is so much higher this year, but we haven’t run out of food. Demand hasn’t been this high before, though,” Arbo­gast said. “We’re see­ing more middle-income fam­i­lies look­ing for help. We’re also see­ing many peo­ple com­ing to us for help for the first time.”

Despite the tough eco­nomic times, Arbo­gast said the com­mu­nity has still been very sup­port­ive of OCS.

“We are greatly appre­cia­tive of the sup­port of the Ober­lin and greater Ober­lin com­mu­nity. Even in these tough times, we haven’t seen a decline in sup­port,” she said.

Posted by Scott Mahoney on Dec 8 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.