Published in The Santa Fe New Mexican on November 15, 2025
Bagging most beans, spilling a few, Atalaya Elementary students pitch in at The Food Depot
By André Salkin asalkin@sfnewmexican.com, November 15, 2025
Carmen Garcia, 10, adds a scoop of pinto beans to a bag Thursday alongside her fifth grade classmates from Atalaya Elementary School while volunteering for the second time at The Food Depot. (
The children understood their mission: Bag and label pinto beans to be distributed to families in need.
About 40 fifth-graders used division of labor and efficient assembly lines to tackle the volunteer job Thursday at The Food Depot with the professionalism and seriousness befitting a noble task.
The young volunteers circled a couple of 2,000-pound bean sacks in the halls of The Food Depot and got to work. Some scooped beans into bags; some weighed the bags; others tied them shut. At the end of the long table of bean-packagers, Ray Smith, 10, developed a sophisticated system to arrange the finished bags in a neat, stable fashion.
“ We haven’t had any major bean spills. It’s a big old assembly line, and it’s already proven to be efficient,” Ray said.
“And they’re a fun food to package,” chipped in Calvin Lovato, 11, at his side. “That’s not the main thing, but they definitely are fun.”
The school outing is the second in a series of holiday-season visits teachers and students say has been a big hit at the school; staff said it’s been a boon for the food bank, which has recently seen a surge in demand.
As time passed, adolescent restlessness grew, beans began to spill, and the group’s initial efficiency faltered.
After tying off a bag of beans, 10-year-old Lia Cotofana hurled the package at Seven Peterson.
“If you drop that, you’re cooked,” Seven said as he caught the fastball.
Another student reckoned he’d like to jump into Ray’s meticulously arranged pile of bagged beans. Izaiah Morales, 10, who said his family directly benefits from Food Depot distributions, wrapped his arms around a precarious stack of bean bags piled so high it reached his glasses.
Seven, 11, said he has traveled far and wide: five continents and 25 countries, taking away from his travels a simple message: “A lot of people, me included, take food and water for granted, and a lot of other resources too.”
Many of the kids shared the sentiment that the work they were doing was vital.
“They say they want to give back,” said teacher Bart Ramey, who established the tradition at the school with an October visit, and who has plans for another field trip in December.
“They say it makes them feel better about their self-esteem,” he added, an angle he said plays into the social-emotional learning that’s part of the students’ curriculum.
In a separate room, Lisa Rubin, the other fifth grade teacher, was managing her 17 students. She said she jumped at the opportunity when Ramey proposed it.
“ We have the same values,” she said. “We both are about … having them be conscious socially.”
“ It’s kind to help people,” said 11-year-old Aidan Martinez, as he packed beans alongside his twin brother Aaron. “You need to spread joy.”
Jackie Lighter, 10, whose first volunteer experience was Thursday, said she “might actually want to work” at The Food Depot when she gets older, “probably because it’s fun to bag beans,” she said.
Items like beans are standard to the food bank’s distribution packages, which also include 50%-60% fresh produce and vegetables, dairy or eggs and a protein item.
‘Right now, especially’
“ It’s important to give back,” said Keshav Hedrick, 10, who wore a very serious face as he slid labels into bean bags. “Right now, especially, people need it more because the government shut down. It’s harder for people to get food.”
The students’ visit, an exercise in civic engagement — and some fun — is timely for The Food Depot, which serves nine counties as one of the region’s preeminent food distributors. The food bank has seen a 40% increase in the number of those seeking its food, said Pauline Montoya, lead volunteer program coordinator for the food bank — a product of uncertainty and fear around suspension of SNAP benefits, also referred to as food stamps.
“It was a little scary,” she said. But she trusted her leadership and hundreds of volunteers, who she refers to as her “little babies.”
“We kind of went back to our COVID times of saying, ‘Hey, we’ve made it through this.’ ”
It was during the pandemic that Montoya decided to join the food bank. She recalled the food distributions that fed her family — a single mother with five children growing up on San Ildefonso Pueblo.
“ Just seeing I had food in my own community,” she said, “I was like, ‘I could be doing that for someone else.’”
