When Bethanne Blinder moved to Micanopy from Gainesville in 2015, she became one of many community members to get free uncooked food from a local pantry. She could make her own meals with it at home, but she noticed that many other people could not.
“They look at it,” Blinder, 62, said of the various uncooked items offered, “and you could tell by their face, ‘Oh gosh, I wish,’ and they’d put it back.”
She added: “That’s when it dawned on me – these people probably have no way to cook it, or they don’t know how. And that’s what it turned out to be.”
Blinder decided to try and help. She started small by making ham and cheese sandwiches for what she called "sac meals” and leaving them at the pantry. She started posting in Facebook groups when she would make drop-offs and began receiving messages from people in need.
“I just left a piece of cardboard from a box and a pencil” at the pantry, she said. It said, “If you need a sac meal, just put your initials here, or first name only, and tell me how many you need.”
Within three days, the cardboard piece had 28 names on it. The list ranged from a senior citizen who could no longer cook to a family of seven struggling to afford food, Blinder said. “It grew rapidly from those few sandwiches to, at one point, I was feeding 33 people a day,” she said.
Most of the people she fed couldn’t get to the pantry or her home, so she started using her car to deliver her meals to them. During the holidays, she did so for 50 families across Alachua County.
It all soon became more than she could handle.
“It could be five miles that way, turn around and go about 20 miles that way; I went as far as 15 miles,” Blinder said. Sometimes, she joked, she wouldn’t even know what municipality she was in: “I don’t mind. I’ll go anywhere. If somebody’s hungry, I’m going to feed them.”
With her aiming to help even more people, a local church gave Blinder access to a small house on its property to open a soup kitchen.
But that effort quickly ended in heartbreak, as a state agency ordered it closed on the kitchen’s opening day.
Rick and Christine Nelson were there when the state arrived.
Nelson, 35, and his wife, said they live in a RV. He does his best to help them make ends meet, working multiple jobs while she takes care of their three children at home.
One day, their vehicle broke down and they needed food. They came across one of Blinder’s Facebook posts and asked for a hot meal. Finding her was a miracle, they said.
“We were really, honestly, struggling,” Rick Nelson said.
“Yeah, we had nothing,” Christine Nelson said.
Amanda Justice, 35, a single mom who works at a local daycare, met Blinder when she noticed brown-bagged sandwiches and hot meals at the pantry.
“It was very obvious that whoever was doing it was doing it with love, because everything was just meticulous, and the food was very good,” Justice said. “It’s almost like I was eating my grandmother’s cooking.”
Soon, Blinder started cooking for Justice’s family daily.
“It was exciting, and just a wonderful feeling that somebody cared enough to do that and, as a mom who’s running all the time, to have that was amazing,” Justice said.
As Blinder struggled to deliver all meals requested, Justice offered to help. Blinder was reluctant to accept. “She’s not used to getting help, and she’s used to doing things herself,” Justice said.
First Baptist Church of Micanopy offered the house, and Blinder named it Basket of Hope. However, as WUFT News was interviewing her, agents from the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation arrived, cited an anonymous complaint, and shut it down.
“She has been attempting to feed the homeless in the area for a long time and has made a lot of people sick,” the complaint stated, according to a copy obtained by WUFT. “It would be best if she understands there needs to be food safety involved in her operation.”
Blinder has a food handling license but did not meet other food safety standards, the agents said.
Multiple attempts by WUFT to contact the agency about Blinder’s case have been unsuccessful.
“It’s got to be personal,” she said of whoever complained, “and they are a coward for not leaving their name – and they’re also a coward for not bringing me their concerns. But the biggest part about this is, they did this on a lie. Nobody ever got sick on my food ever.”
Justice said she and her children have never gotten sick from Blinder’s meals.
“She still keeps in contact with everybody that she feeds – and nobody has complained to her about being sick,” Justice said. “That was disheartening for me and upsetting that somebody would just lie and say that.”
Blinder has stopped making her deliveries. She still encourages community members to support the families she was feeding, but she said she feels heartbroken and devastated for them.
“One of the kids just turned to me and said, ‘Why can’t you feed us anymore?’ – and I could not answer her. I just couldn’t,” Blinder said. “I couldn’t figure out what to say to this child.”
Her social media posts announcing the soup kitchen’s closure have garnered a lot of responses expressing symphony for Blinder and the loss of her services.
Lori Ann Skaggs, 53, who lives on a small farm in Hawthorne, said she doesn't know Blinder personally and hasn’t needed any of her meals but has been keeping up with her on Facebook.
Skaggs called the loss a “travesty” for the community.
“It’s sad this had to happen,” she said. “I do believe that a lot of families are going to suffer.”
Blinder has since left Micanopy to visit her family in Virginia. When she returns, she will advocate for ways to fight food insecurity and homelessness, she said.
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