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Cops spread holiday cheer with food boxes 

It’s nearly Christmas and three police employees are making their regular holiday rounds armed with 15-pound turkeys and boxes stuffed with cranberry sauce, yams and cookies. 

Police service assistants Brenda Logan and Tess Artizada and patrol officer Ross Kassebaum are volunteering their time crisscrossing Berkeley in a white Cherokee delivering holiday meals to needy residents as part of the Berkeley Booster Holiday Food Basket Program. 

Nelda O’Neal, her grandchildren shyly standing behind her, thank Kassebaum with a kiss on the cheek. “It such a pleasure to be acknowledged as somebody who deserves this,” she says. 

At about 6 a.m. Friday about 50 volunteers from various organizations gathered in front of the new Public Safety Building and began to sort 11,400 pounds of food including 3,900 pounds of turkey, 1,250 pounds of potatoes, 1,000 pounds of oranges and 1,000 pounds of yams. They put the food into baskets, each containing enough food to feed 10 people. 

The baskets were then loaded into a fleet of patrol vans, squad cars, parking enforcement scooters and a converted AC Transit bus known as the Mobile Sub Station to make the deliveries.  

The program began 16 years ago when Sgt. Bruce Agnew and Sgt. Alec Boga got the idea to raise money for the giveaway through a “Turkey Ride” in which police officers find sponsors for a 216 mile bicycle ride from Berkeley to South Lake Tahoe. 

Local organizations that participated in this year’s giveaway include the Berkeley Boosters, the Berkeley Rotary Club and Berkeley Kiwanis Club.