Food for all:

Mark Gierach knew he would someday be leaving the Ozaukee Food Alliance.

But as the 72-year-old nonprofit organization’s founder and executive director who believes in its mission to his core readies to retire, he wasn’t going to leave it to just anybody.

That’s why he’s happy that Andrea Acosta, the organization’s events coordinator, is taking over next month.

“I didn’t want to walk out the door and say, ‘OK, here are the keys. Have fun,’” Gierach said. “That creates too much turmoil and inconsistency.”

Plenty of that can arise just by running a food pantry. A trucking firm may call about a load that a store didn’t order and it can’t send back.

“You want it? Come get it,” Gierach said. “When it becomes available, you take it.”

Acosta, who has been a full-time employee since January and has been working to transition into the executive director role, is ready for the ever-changing circumstances.

“Every day becomes a pivot day,” she said.

It was a pivot that Gierach made that started the organization nearly 15 years ago.

Gierach worked for 30 years as an Ozaukee County Sheriff’s deputy before retiring, and he used to lead mission trips to Ohio as a youth mentor at Parkside Community United Church of Christ in Saukville. After each day working in a soup kitchen, food pantry or community garden, he posed a question to his adolescents.

“‘OK, what did you learn?’ And eventually the question came up, ‘Why don’t we?’” Gierach said.

“As a leader of a youth group like that through a church, how do you answer that question?”

He has been answering it every day since.

Gierach did research upon returning from that mission trip in 2011 and in 2012 connected to a small pantry operated out the former rectory at Immaculate Conception Church in Saukville “in a room probably about the size of this office,” he said from his spot at Ozaukee Food Alliance.

He was asked to take over the organization and he agreed, but Gierach didn’t want to be under a church; he wanted his own nonprofit organization. Ozaukee Family Alliance was born.

Gierach, who grew up on a hobby farm in Mequon, is turning the organization over to someone with a similar background. He and Acosta come from poor working families and have been serving the community for years.

Acosta, 46, and her husband Eli are from Milwaukee and run That Taco Guy food truck. Eli, of Puerto Rican dissent, does all the cooking and helped start the Food Trucks in the Park fundraiser, first for a dishwasher for Parkside UCC before expanding.

Andrea worked in real estate, following in her mother’s footsteps, for 15 years and was a federal agent in the criminal division with the U.S. Treasury Department.

The couple and their three children lived in Ozaukee County for years. Eli is on the Ozaukee Food Alliance board and she worked on the capital campaign committee.

After just one conversation with Mark and Nancy,  Andrea and Eli they decided they had to get involved. “They’re infectious,” Andrea said.

Gierach has navigated the organization through ups and downs with the level of need and giving based on the economy. Now, he said, times are tough given cuts to multiple social programs, pauses on grants  and the slowing of corporate giving. That couples with a growing client base.

“The demand is increasing, no ifs ands or buts about it,” he said.

The organization lives on local support; it does not have any kind of endowment.

“Day-by-day operations are at the will of the community,” Gierach said.

Much of its manpower also comes from the same place. The organization has only a handful of full-time employees and a few part-timers.

“We rely heavily on volunteers,” Acosta said.

More than 80 make the pantry go, and some are trained well enough so that paid staff doesn’t have to be on hand when it opens.

“It’s a well-oiled machine. Mark is very organized,” Acosta said.

Like other pantries, Ozaukee Food Alliance battles the misconceptions about its clientele being lazy and refusing to get jobs.

“Most clients work,” Acosta said.

But, Gierach said, they don’t make enough money to cover housing, insurance, a car, food and other typical expenses.

Still, some don’t come to the pantry.

“There are people who will not come to a food pantry because there’s a stigma attached to it. It’s the same thing with the community meal site,” he said.

The majority of those attending the free meal, he said, are elderly who are seeking interaction.

“It’s social as much as it is nutritious. It’s community,” he said.

Despite the regular challenges and difficult times, Acosta jumped at the chance to lead the Alliance. Her first day will be in mid-September.

“It wasn’t even a second thought. It was never a question of should I or shouldn’t I,” she said.

For Acosta and Gierach, their salary is not their motivation; Ozaukee Food Alliance doesn’t even offer fringe benefits.

“Sometimes the greatest pay is where money just doesn’t equal it. They start seeing what they can get, the tears start going down the cheeks,” Gierach said.

“People are so grateful at times. That is more fulfilling than a paycheck.”

Acosta remembers seeing a woman with two children who just left an abusive relationship.

“She just started crying because she was so grateful that we have food for her,” she said.

Gierach has also seen changes to volunteers’ lives. One Port Washington High School student seeking service hours started as a freshman and regularly volunteered for four years, as well as her first two during college as time allowed.

Another teen came through court-ordered community service after being caught for underage drinking. She too kept coming back.

“It made an impact on her and her life,” Gierach said.

Gierach’s continued motivation is from a higher power.

“So much of what I do in this organization goes back to my religious training. What would Jesus do?” he said. “If you use that phrase and apply it to what’s happening in our country today, I think Jesus would be very unhappy.”

Acosta keeps hope alive for a similar reason.

“It’s easy. We’re here to serve people in need.”

Gierach has no retirement plans other than to spent time on his Town of Farmington home. He is used to holding one to three jobs since he was 18, and this is the first time he will have none.

“You have a job,” Acosta said. “It’s to enjoy life.”

For more information or to donate or volunteer, visit https://ozaukeefoodalliance.org.