4th Annual Feed The Zombies Food Drive
By Joshua Rivera
From October 29th to October 31st, the Feed the Zombies Food Drive was held at 5510 Lombardy Court. The Food Drive is a non-profit event that was created by Kern County resident Cherie Willis to help the homeless in Kern County.
This is the fourth year that Willis has hosted her food drive. Every year she usually receives over 300 canned good items from people in the Kern County community wanting to receive a good scare at her haunted house. On the 30th, Willis had already received over 144 cans of food and was expecting a lot more on Halloween. Every year she has a different theme for her haunted house, and this year’s theme seemed to center more on clowns and the circus.
Willis says she hosts this event to try and show people that Halloween should be “looked upon as a celebration” like Christmas or Thanksgiving because not many people decide to celebrate Halloween anymore. She also does this because more holidays are coming, and not many people will be able to celebrate with food.
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Willis says she also decided to do this because she received canned goods from the community when she was younger, so she likes to do the same thing for families that are in a similar situation. Even when her house burned down earlier this year and she lost all of her props for the haunted house, she decided to redo everything and still host the event.
Willis usually donates her canned goods to nonprofit organizations, but this year decided to make gift baskets and give them directly to the Bakersfield Homeless Center/Bethany House. She says, “I would like to feed thirty people in one day, then feed ten people overtime.”
Willis’ haunted house is a big success every year that is usually advertised on Kern County’s website for events, Facebook, and even the news. Willis is doing good work for the community and encourages Kern County residents to check out her haunted house and get involved with donating canned goods.