A food pantry housed within a Woodland Park Catholic parish has quietly expanded over roughly three decades from a garden-based sharing program into a broad resource carrying refrigerated goods, household staples, and even the occasional box of snack cakes. A former volunteer involved with the ministry said it likely got its start sometime in the mid-1990s, initially centered on homegrown produce before gradually adding canned and packaged goods.
At one stage in its history, the ministry operated under the name Tea's Table, an identity drawn from a young parishioner with cerebral palsy. The program eventually wound down before a small group — including two parishioners and a longtime volunteer and her husband — brought it back to life around 2019 or 2020. It later took the name Saint Martin Food Pantry, honoring a saint the pastor described as a patron of people living in poverty and struggling to find enough to eat.
The pastor broadened the pantry's inventory to cover cold and frozen goods, adding a refrigerator and a freezer capable of holding dairy products, eggs, bread, and select frozen foods. The shelves extend well beyond food items, reflecting the wide range of households served — among them grandparents raising grandchildren and families weathering job losses — with personal-care products, diapers, baby formula, and dental supplies all available. Though some pantries avoid stocking doughnuts and snack cakes on nutritional grounds, the pastor takes a more permissive stance, reasoning that if recipients have no other way to obtain those items, the pantry will carry them.
A small number of fast-moving items carry per-visit limits so the supply holds out for everyone, but otherwise visitors may take what they need, and walking out with three or four bags is not unusual. A period of disruption to SNAP benefits brought a sharp rise in visitors, and the pantry's foot traffic remained higher than its pre-disruption level even after those benefits were restored. The majority of people coming through the door are women, and many arrive accompanied by children.
Donor generosity has carried the pantry through difficult stretches. One regular supporter surveys the shelves for whatever is running short, drives to a store, and comes back with the missing supplies. A bakery owner from Victor, who told the pantry she remembers struggling financially while building her business with her husband and children and said she knows "what it's like to be hungry," now shows up regularly with contributions. The holiday season brings turkeys and full meal kits — packages that can contain cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, and gravy alongside a frozen bird, giving recipients everything needed for a complete holiday dinner.
Saint Martin Food Pantry functions within a wider Teller County network that includes two other organizations: Community Partnership Family Resource Center, based in Woodland Park, and Aspen Mine Center, located in Cripple Creek. The pantry is currently open to the public four days a week and operates out of the Lower Parish Hall. Contributions of gift cards for groceries, nonperishable food, and hygiene products may be dropped off at the parish office or brought to the church following weekend worship services.
Whether rising food costs — which the pastor characterized as increasing substantially — will push demand even higher in the months ahead remains an open question for the pantry and its network of community partners.