On a stop at Raley's in early June, store employees rolled out carts filled with food nearing its sell-by date but still safe to eat. The day's pick up included vegetables, bread, packaged foods and fresh crab legs. There was no dairy or meat that day, but Boliver carefully loaded everything into the truck, making sure it stayed cold for the drive back to Sierra Community House.
"I would say my job is kind of a 50/50 split between actually getting the rescue food, and then distributing it, so the first half of my day is usually driving around to grocery stores, picking up the donations, and then the second half would be actually giving it to the people,” she said.
Back at the nonprofit's warehouse, Boliver unloaded the donations quickly. Much of the rescued food needed to reach families within days.
Sierra Community House operates the only community food pantry serving Truckee and North Lake Tahoe. The organization has seen demand increase as more residents struggle with the region's high cost of living.
"What we've seen over the last year or two is increased need, a lot more people coming, and people talking about, you know, they've never come to a food bank before, but because of the cost of gas and the cost of rent, they just can't make ends meet anymore," said executive director Teresa Crimmens.
At the same time demand has risen, the nonprofit lost a major source of federal funding through the USDA's Local Food Purchasing Assistance program, known locally as "Farms Together." The program had helped pay for nearly all of the pantry's fresh produce purchases.
"With that funding going away, we're really needing to figure out how we are going to pay for the produce, the fruits and vegetables," Crimmens said.
To help make up the difference, Sierra Community House has expanded its food rescue partnerships with grocery stores throughout the region. The organization now rescues 22,000 pounds of food each month that would otherwise be discarded.
For Boliver, those donations are often the most rewarding part of the job.
"Sometimes I'll come in, and they have a whole pallet of milk and yogurt and cream and stuff like that, so it's really great. People love it, and I get excited with the produce because it's what people get excited about,” Boliver said.
The nonprofit serves hundreds of households each week across Truckee, Kings Beach and Incline Village.
Patrick Kratzer, Sierra Community House's director of hunger relief operations, said the program reaches even more people over the course of a month.
"We see about 1,000 unique households every month, each of those is an average of a household size of three, so about 3,000 local community members would be impacted if the hunger relief program went away," Kratzer said.
As Sierra Community House adjusts to the loss of federal funding, food rescue has become an increasingly important way to keep nutritious food out of landfills and on the tables of families across North Lake Tahoe.
