Immigrant Woman Starts Food Pantry In Her Home To Help Undocumented Families

Ingmar Riveros and Peruvian refugee Xiomy De la Cruz distribute food from a store basement last month in Hartford, Conn. (Joe Amon/Connecticut Public)

Early in the pandemic, Xiomy De la Cruz was working at a fast food restaurant, but her work hours were cut back. She is a Peruvian refugee single mother with two children and another on the way. Like many families, she found herself in various pantry lines to make ends meet.

“So I said to myself one day, ‘why not fill up my car with food and take it to my house?’ There are so many moms who don’t have access to a car for transportation,” De la Cruz said. “I filled up my van and put a ‘free food’ sign on my door.”

De la Cruz began collecting food, diapers and milk and started distributing them to friends and neighbors. She called it La Bodeguita de la Gente or The People’s Little Cornerstore. For six months, she stored everything in her Hartford living room.

“My living room, my entrance, my porch, became the People’s Little Cornerstore. I no longer had a table, no armchairs, because as more donations were coming in, people began to hear about the store,” De la Cruz said.

Many of the families who knocked on her front door are undocumented, severly impacted by the pandemic and were ineligible for federal COVID-19 assitance. The food pantry quickly outgrew her living room, and she borrowed a space in what she describes as the heart of Hartford’s Latino and immigrant community.

Read the rest of this story at WNPR.org.