Lutze makes donations to pantries in 10 states
By Angie Landsverk
Teegan Lutze spent the last week of his summer vacation donating food to pantries throughout the country.
The road trip with his father Aaron resulted in 3,073 pounds of food being donated.
That included 425 pounds of food to the Waupaca Area Food Pantry.
“We’ve definitely got some glances,” the 17-year-old said earlier this month.
Teegan lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.
His father, Aaron, is the son of Kay and the late Barrie Lutze. They were both teachers in the Waupaca School District.
Gift of giving
One Christmas close to 12 years ago, Aaron and his parents gave Teegan a Piggly Wiggly gift card.
“You got stuff for Christmas. Now let’s start giving back to the community,” Teegan remembers being told.
He used the $50 gift card to buy food and donate it to Waupaca’s food pantry.
Teegan continued donating food to pantries.
By last spring, he was 900 pounds away from donating 1 ton of food.
On Aug. 15, he began his senior year of high school.
He had to do a senior exit project and decided to raise money and buy food for pantries.
The planning began last Christmas.
“It lined up perfectly,” Teegan said.
He was going to Portland, Oregon this summer to visit his dad.
Teegan raised $2,420 through a GoFundMe page.
“Friends and family kicked in. They saw Teegan do this every Christmas and every summer,” Aaron said.
He arrived in Portland on Aug. 2, and they set off that day.
Aaron said the hardest part of the trip was working off the hours of the food pantries.
From Portland to Spokane
From Portland they went to Spokane, Washington to buy groceries and donate them.
That night, they had dinner at a Chinese restaurant.
Teegan opened his fortune cookie and read the message.
“Seek out a service project that uses your strengths,” it said.
He carried that fortune with him.
They donated food at three more pantries before arriving in Waupaca.
Bringing the project back home
On Aug. 6, they filled two shopping carts with food at Neumann’s Piggly Wiggly.
“They were fully stacked to the top,” Aaron said. “We took over one of the lanes. Everyone was looking at us.”
Employees helped them pack everything into the 2013 Toyota Prius they were driving.
“We took a deep breath,” Aaron said. “Then someone knocked on the window.”
There was one more cart.
When they delivered the food to the pantry the next morning, it put Teegan’s lifetime donation at over 1,000 pounds.
“We did the first one ever at Piggly Wiggly years ago,” Aaron said.
Hitting that mark here was special for them, and they went on to donate even more.
The local pantry appreciates the donation.
Kathy Jenner is the volunteer operations manager.
“It’s always wonderful to see young people, like Teegan, take on a project like this,” she said. “It increases awareness across all generations about food insecurity in our community and demonstrates what one caring person can do.”
Donations tend to decrease significantly in the summer, Jenner said.
Families go on vacation or parents focus on their children who are home from school full time, she said.
“So large donations like this are a real shot in the arm to help us keep the shelves stocked,” Jenner said.
Teegan also donated food at pantries in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia and North Carolina before arriving home Aug. 9.