Overseeing it all was Long Beach “Chief Inspiration Officer” Justin Rudd, monitoring the baskets and the process of getting them to the various community groups to which they’d been promised.
“Volunteers,” he announced at one point, “I need y’all to stop what you’re doing and help load these baskets in that flatbed truck outside.”
A line of approximately fifteen people streamed outdoors, ant-style, carrying eighty completed and cellophane-wrapped baskets to a truck that had arrived from Carmelitos Housing Project.. There were lots of smiles–and a minor crisis averted. Five of the baskets earmarked for another group had been accidentally loaded into the flatbed! The Carmelitos representatives scanned the flatbed, finding baskets with specific names on them and returning them before the truck drove off.