By Request: Helpful hands keep recipe fundraiser in the money

For the past many years — I don’t even remember how many — during the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I’d carry a cardboard box back and forth from office to home.

Inside the box were envelopes, hundreds of them, each one an order for the By Request Top 5 recipes, a fundraiser for the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s holiday charity, the Good Neighbor Fund.

I’d slit them open and sort them during my nightly TV watching, then add up the money on the ride into work the next day. (I even bought a state-of-the-art letter opener that I use only at this time of year.)

My partner in this effort, editorial clerk Sherri Yoshioka, would take over, stuffing the return envelopes with recipes. For years, it was just us, except when we could conscript a co-worker or a child to slit or stuff.

Until this year, when a Christmas angel showed up.

Two days after the recipe offer was announced in November, Jeannie Fuji­kawa, a retired secretary from Hawaii Kai, offered to help process the orders, as her holiday service project. She didn’t have to ask twice.

Jeannie has made a half-dozen trips to our office and set herself up in the corner, ever cheerful and just an envelope machine.

She opens orders, separates out those missing return envelopes, stamps or (worse) the $5 donation. She folds the recipes, stuffs and seals the return envelopes, then alphabetizes the orders for our records.

All I have to do is count the money.

Speaking of that, this year’s offer, which ended Friday, has brought in $7,000, with more still trickling in. All of it will go to the Good Neighbor Fund, which supports local families in need.

Every year someone asks if they could please order and pay online. We haven’t set up that system, in large part because we don’t want to incur costs that will cut into those $5 donations.

And as long as just a couple of people are willing to put in the time, we can do that. So thank you, Jeannie. Your efforts helped more than you can imagine.

And special thanks to Sherri, who left the newsroom a few weeks ago for another job. After so many years putting up with this task, your fingers may start to itch next December, looking for envelopes to stuff.

And, of course, thanks to everyone who cared enough about cooking and the cause to order recipes this year, especially those who tucked in some extra money for the charity.

Happy cooking in 2020.

Write By Request, Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 7 Waterfront Plaza, Suite 210, Honolulu 96813; or email requests to bshimabukuro@staradvertiser.com.