Food bank has fed Pierce Co. for 50 years. Now 59% of visitors are older adults

For years, Gig Harbor Peninsula FISH Food Bank and Community Services has watched clients walk through their doors, looking for help.

Retirees whose pensions fell short. Professionals suddenly finding themselves out of a job. Survivors fleeing domestic violence.

Starting in 1976 with little more than a call-for-help phone line and a group of neighbors willing to help with tasks like babysitting, transportation and housework, the food bank now serves thousands of families, singles and children in the greater Gig Harbor and Key Peninsula areas. They’ve since shifted their focus to offering free groceries, clothing, shoes and household items; running a financial aid program to help with costs like housing and utilities; assisting students with books, supplies and other fees; and working with Peninsula School District counselors to support kids in need.

More than 50% of their clients are older adults or have a disability, according to a fact sheet shared with The News Tribune, and they average over 800 family visits each month. Over the decades, the food bank has kept records of the reasons clients have asked for help, from job loss to unexpected bills to abandonment by a spouse. While the data isn’t perfect — the food bank switched their counts from calendar year to fiscal year in 2016, for example — it paints a picture of the food bank’s extraordinary growth over the decades.

“It’s very humbling to see how it’s grown,” GHP FISH founder Jan Coen said in a video posted to the food bank’s website. “It’s not one person, it’s the caring hearts of all the people that are willing to help their neighbor, bringing love into the community, (showing) you’re not alone, that someone cares what’s going to happen to you.”

Her husband, Ron Coen, said in the video that the people who volunteer at the food bank make him proud of his community. As a child, his own home burned to the ground, and he remembers how his neighbors helped the family survive.

“There’s a culture I think here in Gig Harbor of taking care of each other,” he said. “It’s just part of the way Gig Harbor is.”

The food bank is hosting a “birthday party” on Saturday, Aug. 29, from 1-3 p.m. at Sehmel Homestead Park’s Vern Volunteer Pavilion. The event will include “family-friendly fun and games as we look back on 50 years of service and forward to continuing to meet our neighbors’ needs,” the website says. You can RSVP on the food bank’s website. The ‘Fish’ movement

GHP FISH's origin story began when Jan Coen happened to read a Reader’s Digest article titled “A Friendly Neighbor Called ‘Fish,’” printed in 1969.

The article explained that a volunteer movement was spreading across the world: people everywhere were starting their own groups to help their neighbors with such services as transportation, babysitting, cooking and housework. The model began with a church in England and quickly caught on with other congregations internationally. It was called the Fish movement because of the symbol that volunteers used to identify members of the network able to help.

The couple moved frequently while Ron served in the U.S. Navy. After they moved back to their hometown of Gig Harbor, Jan looked for a group similar to the volunteer movement they’d been involved with in San Diego. Not finding one, she decided to start her own, convening a small group of church leaders, police and fire personnel to determine what the community’s needs were.

Soon, volunteers were manning a telephone hotline and organizing people to help with babysitting, hot meals, transportation and other services. In 1983, they took over an empty food bank space after the Pierce County Community Action Agency relocated from the Burton Park Building on 38th Avenue Northwest to Tacoma, a brochure says. GHP FISH became an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 1985.

In 2000, the organization began renting a space from the Gig Harbor Eagles. In 2022, the food bank opened a 10,600-square-foot facility at 4303 Burnham Dr. with space for their groceries, clothing and household items; offices and meeting rooms; and a large warehouse to store and process donations, the brochure says.

The food bank now has over 300 volunteers and is staffed by 1.75 full-time equivalent employees. Changing client demographics

GHP FISH provides emergency food services to the greater Gig Harbor area, the Key Peninsula and the southernmost area of Kitsap County, as far as Pine/Nelson Road or the Horseshoe Lake area, communications coordinator Sue Lockett John told The News Tribune in an email. The food bank brochure says their service area includes 11 zip codes.

Annual reports show that the food bank has recorded a steady increase in the number of visits they’ve received from older adults in at least the last five years. In the 2021-2022 fiscal year, the food bank reported that 26% of their 11,860 individual visits (including repeat visits) were related to clients’ status as senior citizens (the food bank doesn’t ask for their ages, according to John). That number jumped up to 31% of their 16,263 individual visits in 2022-2023, and to 59% of their 29,443 individual visits in 2024-2025. Clients can list multiple reasons when visiting the food bank.

John noted that the first percentage likely skewed low because of the COVID-19 pandemic, when some clients had difficulty visiting the food bank. “We’ve always had a high % of seniors, and seems to be increasing,” she wrote in a text message.

The trend aligns with broader demographic shifts in the greater Gig Harbor area, where the population tends to be older than in Pierce County as a whole, according to U.S. Census data. Between 1990 and 2021, the median age in the city of Gig Harbor increased from 40.3 to 41.8 years old, and the population 65 and older is expected to increase 6% from 2020 to 2040, according to data on the city’s website. In 2019, approximately 42% of households of residents age 62 and up in Gig Harbor were considered cost-burdened or severely cost-burdened, paying more than 30% of their household income on housing.

GHP FISH also estimates that roughly a third of their clients are considered ALICE — a category created by United Way of Northern New Jersey that stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. These are “cashiers, waiters, child care providers, and other members of our essential workforce” who earn “just above the Federal Poverty Level but less than what it costs to make ends meet,” the ALICE website says.

Per the website, the ALICE threshold is a better measure of financial hardship than the Federal Poverty Level because it accounts for locational differences in the cost of living. In Pierce County, a family of two adults and two kids (not in childcare) with an income less than $83,292 fell below the ALICE threshold in 2024, according to the ALICE reports. 24% of households on the Gig Harbor peninsula fell into that category, and 36% of households on the Key Peninsula, per the data broken down by census county subdivision.

It’s not clear whether the percentage of GHP FISH clients who are ALICE has changed over the years, as the food bank doesn’t track ALICE clients specifically. But volunteers told The News Tribune that their visitors have included many who never thought they’d find themselves asking for help.

“We’ve had people driving up in tears, because it’s a very hard thing the first time you have to come to a food bank,” John told The News Tribune.

One volunteer, Birgit Mendoza, said clients she’s met include older adults on fixed incomes and employees missing paychecks during the shutdown of the federal government. Rising costs continue to bring people to their doors.

“Actually last Wednesday when I was working, we had three new clients, and that doesn’t happen very often,” she said. “It’s just the state of the economy right now.” ‘A hand up, not a handout’

Volunteers emphasized the food bank’s commitment to treating all of their visitors with respect and dignity. The food bank’s motto is “a hand up, not a handout,” Jan Coen told The News Tribune. “We try to be able to help people get back on their feet.”

Betty Jutte, the food bank’s volunteer treasurer, recalled an encounter with a former client at a grocery store. The client gave her a hug and told her that her husband and son had found jobs and that her kids had successfully moved out.

“And she said, ‘I really do thank the food bank for helping us out,’” Jutte said. “I said, ‘That’s what we’re there for.’ ... It could be any of us.”

Carol Fujioka has been a volunteer for over six years, primarily helping in the clothing and household items section of the food bank. About a year or so ago, she helped a young man who had to appear in court the next day find some professional clothes to wear, she recalled. More recently, she helped a little girl find two pairs of shoes. She treasures the relationships she’s built with clients over the years.

“First name basis and hugs go a long way,” she said.

Another sign of the food bank’s growth is their annual holiday toy drive, which began supplying gifts for a few hundred kids and now serves over 900. It’s gotten so big that the food bank struggles each year to find a space large enough to process the donations and set up tables for families each year, toy drive volunteer Betsy Cheney told The News Tribune. They organize and run the event over three weeks in December, and are on the hunt for a warehouse space that’s about 4,000 square feet, with access to restrooms and parking. The food bank facility isn’t big enough to accommodate the toy drive without clearing out the interior.

Though the nonprofit has grown from a few shelves of donations to a full-fledged nonprofit with some $3.1 million in revenue and $2.8 million in expenses in their 2024-2025 fiscal year, Ron and Jan Coen emphasized that their focus is still the same: “neighbor helping neighbor.”

“Who knows at our 100th anniversary what we’re going to look like?” John said.

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