Foodbank drive nets
possible Spam record
Lori Kaya, of the Hawaii Foodbank, says she thinks she has the largest collection of Spam in the world. She just can't keep it from falling down.
But the Hawaii Foodbank spokeswoman is putting the Wall of Spam at Restaurant Row back up with clear plastic tape.
The food bank has already topped the 3,350 cans on display at the Spam Museum in Austin, Minn., which Kaya says is the largest known collection of Spam.
The food bank has received 3,511 cans, but the numbers have to be verified since some non-Spam brands have crept into the wall, Kaya said.
Jeff Finney, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin's Newspapers in Education coordinator, is helping the Hawaii Foodbank fill out the forms for the Restaurant Row wall to be included in the Guinness Book of World Records, she said.
The Star-Bulletin and MidWeek are among the sponsors of the project, and were instrumental in collecting the last 800 cans needed to break Minnesota's record, according to Michelle Harris, of the Waterfront Plaza Management Office.
The last day of the food bank's annual food drive was supposed to be April 19, but "we were short only 800 cans from our goal," Harris said.
The Star-Bulletin put out a challenge to the Restaurant Row tenants last week, offering a quarter-page advertisement to any tenant who would come up with the 800 cans. The Ocean Club responded within three days of the offer, Harris said.
The wall was supposed to have been completed yesterday in a Restaurant Row storefront donated by Waterfront Plaza, but portions of the Wall of Spam have come tumbling down twice.
Kaya and volunteers hope to finish it Tuesday by securing the cans with clear plastic tape before adding the last 800 cans from Ocean Club.
Kaya said Spam is the item most in demand by charitable agencies served by the Hawaii Foodbank because it is canned protein and satisfies local tastes.
Hawaii Foodbank