One by one, half-asleep college students, some still wearing their pink pajamas and cow-licked hair, walk like drones towards a street corner on an early Sunday morning. Their hands carry brown grocery bags. The empty streets next to them fill with other students arriving in cars. One by one, they each find seats on a curb, waiting.

Suddenly an old, brown ’91 Honda Accord pulls up and parks on the street. From it emerges a college kids’ Mother Teresa: a young woman shuttling free food for their barren fridges.

The students approach the car as one peaceful herd and help unload the vehicle of its contents: bananas, bread, flowers, cookies, chicken breasts, eggs, vegetables. After they finish, they respectfully form a line. Each approaches the food placed in ice coolers and baskets on the ground and begins selecting the food they want to take home.

Behind all the food stands CSUMB graduate student Renée Shinkle. She’s holding a package of frozen chicken. “Hey guys,” she says. “We got some chicken breasts over here, anybody want them?”

Shinkle has squeezed time from a full schedule as a student and special education teacher at two local K-8 schools to deliver free Trader Joe’s food every Sunday for the past three and a half years. She leaves her apartment by 9am, drives to Trader Joe’s, loads her car with food, and drives to the corner by 10:30am. If unable to make the trip, she has a set of helpers willing to make sure the students aren’t left listening to the soundtrack of grumbling stomachs on the curb.

“The whole program began when a guy on my street, Captain John, worked for Traders Joe’s and he informed me about the opening to pick up the food every Sunday,” says Shinkle. “I saw a need out here for students and families.”

Instead of throwing anything away, Trader Joe’s has a “Spoils Program” where the store donates food that they will be unable to sell for various reasons. These include items such as about-to-expire bread and cases of eggs containing one or two cracked passengers. Surplus unsold holiday items such as turkey dinners on Thanksgiving are also given away soon after the holiday has passed.

From Monday through Saturday, the food is sent to Dorothy’s Kitchen in Salinas. But on Sundays, everything is given to Shinkle to take and deliver. Shinkle’s main targets are students with families who are struggling with their financial instability.

“The child of a woman that lived down the street from me would always be walking around eating Top Ramen,” she says. “College students may not have stable diets, but when it’s a child, they need food more. Soon after the program started you would see her with an apple or some healthy food.”

The other group Shinkle targets are the often penniless everyday college students living in CSUMB housing who are more than happy to take advantage of her program.

“She really helps us out,” says Nicholas Sherman, a CSUMB graduate student. “I can get bread there, freeze it, and preserve it for a couple more days.”

On this weekend before the new semester, more than 20 people stand in line. When the school year begins, Shinkle averages over 30 students a Sunday.

Shinkle is currently in the process of filling out the extensive paper work to form her own nonprofit organization, tentatively titled Monterey Bay Students Helping Students. She plans on extending her giveaway program to start providing other college necessities discarded by others, like furniture and mattresses.

Once everyone has rummaged through the pile of food, the students disperse into the surrounding streets, much livelier than they were upon arrival. Just minutes since they arrived, almost nothing is left behind, just some whole grain cookies and the empty ice coolers. Shinkle calmly picks up the empty coolers and carries them back to her apartment.