East County News Service

April 29, 2026 (San Diego County) — The U.S. Postal Service will carry more than just mail Saturday, May 9 during the 34th annual Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive.

Recognized as the largest single-day food collection effort in the United States, the event mobilizes the National Association of Letter Carriers and the Jacobs & Cushman San Diego Food Bank in replenishing local food pantry shelves before summer.

The drive comes at a pivotal moment for the region.

As the school year draws to a close, many children lose access to the daily free or reduced-price meal programs offered by school districts. The summer gap, combined with the sustained pressure of high local living costs, has kept the demand for food assistance at near-record levels.

Last year, the community’s response was massive, with residents donating nearly 127,000 pounds of food along local mail routes.

The logistics of the drive are designed for maximum convenience. To donate, San Diego County residents are asked to place a sturdy bag containing non-perishable food items next to their mailbox before their letter carrier arrives on Saturday.

Letter carriers will collect these donations and take them to local hubs where volunteers and Food Bank staff will sort the haul. The food is then moved to the Food Bank’s primary warehouse in the Miramar area before being distributed to more than 450 nonprofit partners. (Partners including soup kitchens, shelters, and faith-based pantries across the county.)

The Food Bank and more

The San Diego Food Bank has been a fixture of the community since 1977, growing from a small grassroots operation into the county’s primary hunger-relief engine. While the organization rescues millions of pounds of fresh produce and retail leftovers annually, the Stamp Out Hunger drive provides shelf-stable items essential for long-term food security.

Organizers have identified several “most-needed” items that provide the highest nutritional value for families in crisis. These include canned meats and fish, such as tuna and chicken; canned vegetables and fruits; and canned soups, and stews. High-demand pantry staples like oatmeal, boxes of cereal, rice and jars of peanut butter are also high on the priority list.

While the letter carriers handle the heavy lifting on the routes, a massive volunteer effort will be underway at several key processing locations across the city. Between 3 and 6 p.m., teams will be stationed at the Encanto, Grantville and Scripps Ranch post offices, as well as the Food Bank’s main Miramar Warehouse, to manage the influx of goods.

For the NALC, this drive represents a decades-long commitment to the communities they walk every day. By leveraging the existing infrastructure of the postal service, the drive reaches neighborhoods that might otherwise be disconnected from traditional donation centers.

For more information, visit sandiegofoodbank.org/stamp-out-hunger.

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Alaska lawmakers voted Wednesday to send a public pension bill to the desk of Gov. Mike Dunleavy, calling it the culmination of years of effort to restore guaranteed income in retirement for Alaska’s teachers, public safety officers and other state employees.

The House, which passed the bill last year, voted 21-19 along caucus lines to accept changes made to it in the Senate, marking lawmakers’ final approval of the measure. It heads next to the desk of Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who has not commented publicly on whether he’ll sign it.

Supporters of the measure were jubilant on Wednesday, describing the legislation as a solution to a problem two decades in the making.

“Having employees have the option of a defined benefit pension system is a good thing for the state of Alaska. This experiment we’ve been on for the last two decades of a defined contribution system has failed us,” said Rep. Calvin Schrage, an Anchorage independent.

If signed by Dunleavy, the bill will reinstate a guaranteed pension system for employees of the state, municipalities and school districts for the first time since 2006, when lawmakers voted to close the pension system in the face of a multibillion-dollar unfunded liability. Lawmakers replaced it with a 401(k)-style plan that has left many public employees without sufficient income to retire with security, and with less incentive to commit to a full career in Alaska’s public sector.

The unfunded liability was attributed in large part to incorrect actuarial information provided to the state in the early 2000s. The state sued the actuarial firm but failed to recoup enough to fully fund its plans. Alaska has been paying back that liability ever since, with interest.

Supporters of a return to defined benefits say that the 2006 decision is the root of many of the recruitment and retention challenges in the public sector today, including high turnover rates among teachers, public safety officers, road engineers, ferry operators and administrators of critical public safety net programs, among others.

To avoid another financial crisis, crafters of the bill, who include House Majority Leader Chuck Kopp and Senate Majority Leader Cathy Giessel, added requirements for additional actuarial analyses. They also made the plan far less generous for retirees by reducing health care benefits and requiring employees to increase their contributions to the plan if it becomes underfunded. The Senate then changed the bill to provide employees with the option to remain in the current, 401(k)-style retirement system, and to provide municipalities and school districts the option to opt out of offering the new pension to their workers.

But the changes weren’t enough for the 19 House Republicans in the minority, who argued on Wednesday that the plan wasn’t sufficiently analyzed, that it would still pose an unsustainable financial risk to the state, and that it would not solve the state’s recruitment and retention crisis.

“I would consider this Alaska’s rendezvous with destiny,” said Rep. Will Stapp, a Fairbanks Republican, adding that he thinks the state may be about to “repeat the single most expensive financial mistake in the history of the state of Alaska.”

The new pension plan — which would go into effect next year — is set to cost the state tens of millions of dollars annually, depending on the number of public employees who join it. But proponents of the measure say that figure doesn’t account for the amount of money the state will save by avoiding the need to pay overtime in understaffed departments, and by eliminating the need to constantly train new teachers and police officers.

“This bill is not built on hope, but it does bring it,” said Kopp, adding that “the cost of what we’re doing now is orders of magnitude higher than what this bill introduces.”

Though majority lawmakers succeeded in shepherding the legislation through a rigorous process that included dozens of committee hearings and lengthy floor debates, its passage into law isn’t guaranteed.

“We still have one more stop, though — we have the big red pen, potentially,” said Giessel, referring to a potential veto from Dunleavy.

Dunleavy, who receives a state pension from his years as a public school educator, has previously said that younger workers are not as interested in pensions as his generation had been. His spokesperson, Jeff Turner, declined on Wednesday to share whether Dunleavy supports the bill.

“I’m very optimistic,” said Sen. Jesse Kiehl, a Juneau Democrat who has been working on pension reform since the last plan was repealed. “I’m happy to loan the governor the blue pen, the black pen — I’m sure I could find a purple one — any color but red.”

Arizona Diamondbacks prospect Druw Jones needed a home run to complete the cycle when he dug into the batter’s box in the eighth inning of a Double-A game on Wednesday night.

Jones, playing for Double-A Amarillo, stayed behind the baseball and drove an inside pitch to right-center field for his first home run of the season, earning the first cycle in Sod Poodles history.

🚨 DRUW JONES CYCLE 🚨

The @Dbacks prospect becomes the first @sodpoodles player to notch the milestone! pic.twitter.com/5U9ubTtIga

— Minor League Baseball (@MiLB) April 30, 2026

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The 22-year-old knocked out the toughest leg first with a triple to right field in the third inning against the Midland Rockhounds (Athletics). Jones zoomed from home to third base in 11 seconds, Corbin Carroll-esque speed, for his first triple of the season.

Jones singled in the fifth on a ground ball that skipped under shortstop Joshua Kuroda-Grauer’s glove on what would have been a tight play at first base, and in the sixth, he doubled to right field.

His home run came off right-handed pitcher Mitch Myers to give Amarillo a 9-2 lead in a 10-2 win — infield prospect Cristofer Torin went back-to-back with Jones.

The last Diamondbacks major leaguer to hit for the cycle was Aaron Hill, who did so twice within 11 days of each other in 2012. The most recent cycle in Major League Baseball came from Minnesota’s Byron Buxton on July 12.

Jones is the No. 16 prospect in Arizona’s system as ranked by MLB Pipeline and No. 17 by Baseball America.

Known for his defense, the outfielder has gotten off to a slow start statistically with a .229/.345/.343 slash line in his first 19 games playing Double-A baseball. He hit .286 in Cactus League this past spring and performed well in the World Baseball Classic for Team Netherlands.

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