Lunch Ladies Serving Three Meals a Day at Shelter

About a day after Hurricane Sandy blew through Oceanport, Janet Surak and Chris Colaguori rushed over to Shore Regional and started cooking everything in the school's freezer.

They had just gotten word that Oceanport was setting up a warming station at Maple Place School and had been asked to make breakfast that Wednesday morning.

One week later, the ladies, who work for the school district's food service provider Sodexo, are still cooking, serving up three meals a day at what is now a 24-hour shelter being run in part by the American Red Cross.

Colaguori, who's the Sodexo general manager for West Long Branch, Shore Regional and Oceanport schools' food service, said that that first morning, they were cooking homefries by flashlight on the high school's gas grill.

Now, they have been joined by a revolving crew of volunteers to cook up the approximate 500 meals they're serving each day at the shelter. Surak, who usually works at Wolf Hill School, was quick to point out that the whole borough has rallied around their effort. "The entire community has been nothing but generous," she told Patch.