“No podemos dar lo que no queremos.”
“We can’t give what we don’t want.”
“Donde come uno, comen dos.”
“Where one eats, two can eat.”
Everyone deserves the best of us, and there is always enough to share.
This is what makes Mercedes perfect for her job as Quality Control Lead at AzFBN’s No Borders No Limits produce warehouse. She is always instilling a storied sense of purpose and dignity in the unique role she and her team play in hunger relief.
Mercedes was born and grew up in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. She told us that a lot has changed since then, when the two “Nogaleses” (Arizona and Sonora) were more closely connected. People passed across the border with ease, going back and forth to do shopping.
After spending time in school in the United States and eventually marrying and having a daughter and son, Mercedes and her family settled in the Mexico side of Nogales for her husband’s work. She worked, too, doing administrative tasks and taking a job as a receptionist at the same company. But after 18 years, the company moved to another country.
So, Mercedes returned to Nogales, AZ.
Even though she had decades of office experience, those kinds of jobs are hard to come by in a small town, and Mercedes ended up doing a job that is much more common for the area – repacking produce. At first, she did this for companies that provide food to major retailers. Think of the packages of beautiful tomatoes, perfectly ripe peppers, and even squash or melon. But after a couple of jobs, Mercedes needed to find work that fit with her family life, so she moved on.
The experience that she gained in repackaging came in handy when she called the local agency that helps Nogales and Rio Rico area warehouses find temporary personnel. After serving in a temporary role repacking boxes that go to food banks, Mercedes was hired at AzFBN as the Quality Control Specialist, a full-time job with benefits, in December 2023.
Her efforts help ensure that mixed produce boxes built at the AzFBN warehouse in Rio Rico, Arizona (an even smaller town just up the road from Nogales) are full with a variety of produce that families in need of help can use. She tells her coworkers, “Imagine that you are opening it….if the box were for me, I would want the best!” Mercedes, whose family needed help when she was growing up, knows what it is like to need a box of food. So she also knows how important the work in Rio Rico is for families struggling with hunger.
At the same time, the fact that packing these boxes is providing jobs with benefits, training opportunities, and steady work year-round, is helping Mercedes and other families in Rio Rico, too.
“Thanks to [the donors] who make this possible, we have a job,” she says, “and the people that we send the food to, they have something good to eat from day to day. Those of us who are on the [repack] line are the ones who live it. We enjoy it! We finish the day, and we leave with the pleasure that the work was done, and that it was done well.”
“Paso a paso, yo siempre digo.”
“One day at a time, I always say.”
Ending hunger together, one produce box at a time, one day at a time, with abundance and dignity.
Gracias, Mercedes.
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