DENNIS ODA / STAR-BULLETIN
Sherlyn Ujano, left, and her sister, Bernadette, sort through
food that letter carriers collected from their postal customers.
The food that Oahu residents contributed Saturday for mail
carriers to collect for the food bank will help provide
more than 203,000 meals.

U.S. Post delivers
for isle hungry

Star-Bulletin staff

Postal carriers collected 250,000 pounds of food out of residential mailboxes Saturday on Oahu for the Hawaii Foodbank's largest food drive of the year.

The Foodbank's Brett Schlemmer said donations were up more than 12 percent from last year, with more food at five post offices to be picked up today.

"I'm really looking at about the same increase from those other stations as well," he said. "We're really waiting to hear from the neighbor islands."

Schlemmer said it took 10 large container trucks and more than 140 volunteers to move the donations out of the post offices.

It takes about 1.23 pounds of food to feed one person a meal, so the food collected will provide meals to more than 203,000 people.