Tyson Foods makes large food donation to Longview rescue mission

LONGVIEW, Texas (KLTV) - A huge donation comes to the rescue of an East Texas ‘rescue mission’, desperately in need of food to feed the homeless.

Last month, the Hiway 80 Rescue Mission in Longview had a cold storage freezer stop working, resulting in food going bad and in having to throw a large portion of the stored items away.

The mission regularly helps feed and care for the homeless and transient, particularly in the brutal heat of summer.

But last month they faced a hefty problem.

“Our freezer started acting up. We found one of the compressors was down. While trying to get it repaired, the other compressor went down. We had to scramble to save as much as we could. We went from in trouble to out, in the span of about week,” says mission director Brian Livingston.

Having to discard much of their food, the mission was in dire straits.

“We saved everything we could but we just could take a risk. We didn’t have a choice but throw out,” Brian says.

Coming to the rescue was a massive donation from Tyson Foods, simply by chance.

“A delivery was not accepted by the vendor. They called us saying we got to put this chicken somewhere ‘would you take it.’ We said can you give us an idea about how much chicken we’re expecting? Expecting to hear like a pallet or something,” Livingston says.

For a shelter that serves over 500 meals and day and was desperately short on food, It was a Godsend. 41-thousand pounds of chicken.

“There’s always divine intervention. We want to say thank you, we want to say thank you for the selfless sacrifice that people make,” the mission director says.

And for a while at least, they’re will be lots of chicken on the menu.

“Chicken spaghetti, chicken and dumplings, chicken noodle soup, chicken nuggets, who knows?” says Brian.

Hiway 80 Rescue Mission regularly depends on public donations of food to continue their work in caring for the homeless and needy.

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