Nonprofit veteran named president of St. Felix Pantry

RIO RANCHO — It’s been a fast start for Tim Sheahan at St. Felix Pantry.

He came on board as president and CEO of the organization Oct. 1, and already has the golf tournament — one of the nonprofit’s biggest fundraisers — under his belt. Now, he’s staring down the holiday season.

“We always need more at the holiday season,” he said. “We average over 500 customers a week, and we know that’s going to grow every week through the end of the year. ... The holiday season always has a greater need ... when you get kids out of school and kids are at home” and not getting their free meals at school.

Because of the time restraint of him starting so close to Thanksgiving, Sheahan said one holiday tradition — the community Thanksgiving dinner — will have to be put on hold another year. He said to pull the event off, they need to coordinate with local restaurants to cook 25 turkeys off site, and there just isn’t time to pull it together for 2024. However, he’s hopeful about bringing it back in 2025.

“Julian Garza is definitely interested in doing it again, and we’re excited about the possibility of next year bringing it back,” he said. “It’s going to take some more time, but I’m excited about bringing it back. It’s a possibility. I hope we can.”

In fact, it was that Thanksgiving dinner that got Sheahan involved in the organization years ago and helped bring him on to his current role.

“I was aware of the good things that they did, and I thought it’d be a great opportunity to come in and work with this crew here,” he said.

Sheahan comes to St. Felix with about 35 years of nonprofit work, succeeding Sr. Mary Angela Parkins, CSSF, who retired last year. Sheahan’s previous nonprofit work includes serving as the executive director of the New Mexico Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association and 30 years working for the Boys & Girls Clubs in various locations, including Seattle, the East Coast, the Midwest, Denver and in Albuquerque for the Central New Mexico Chapter.

“We are thrilled to welcome Tim Sheahan as the new CEO of St. Felix Pantry,” said Mark White, chairman of the board at St. Felix Pantry. “Tim’s extensive experience in nonprofit management and his dedication to serving the community make him the ideal leader to guide our organization into the future. We are confident that under his leadership, St. Felix Pantry will continue to expand its reach and impact, providing essential resources and support to those in need.”

“I’ve always been in the nonprofit world, and there was a need here,” Sheahan said.

Community involvementOne of Sheahan’s initial goals for St. Felix is to get the pantry’s name back out in the community more.

“St. Felix has been around for over 30 years, and it’s been a little quiet the last couple of years, so i really want us to get back out in the community,” he said, including expanding help to the pueblos.

“We have four trucks that are big trucks that are on the road basically five days a week picking up food around the community,” Sheahan said. “We have a lot of great partners in the way of the grocery stores and those kinds of things, but we also have partners go and do food drives for us. ... We’re always encouraging companies to do a food drive, and churches. We have a lot of churches that do that, too.

“We’re very lucky to have the community support we have, but we also need to expand that,” he added. “It’s a typical pantry. Our shelvwes may be full right now, but after Christmas, we are going to be a little dry, so we try to stock up as much as possible.”

While St. Felix’s greatest needs are dried beans, rice, pasta, canned vegetables, packaged potatoes, pasta meals and the like that have longer shelf lives, that’s not all St. Felix offers its customers.

“We give them a full-rounded meal ... from dried goods to milk to bakery goods to you name it,” Sheahan said, including fresh vegetables.

“I’ve been very impressed by our vegetables we get out of Corrales. All the Corrales farmers are incredible to us,” he said. However, now that October has ended, the growing season has passed and the pantry has to buy some of those fresh products.

“We buy some of our food, but very little of it,” Sheahan said. “Most of it is donated, but because we want them to have a well-rounded meal, that’s why we take our cash donations and use that to sometimes purchase some of the food we need.

“We could use any support from individuals, corporations, organizations, churches, whoever, both in cash donations and any type of food they could send us,” he added. “We get a lot of donated food from all the grocery stores in the area, which we’re very thankful for ... but we always need more, so if anyone wants to hold a food drive, please contact us.”

The organization is also always seeking volunteers to help at the panty, saying several businesses often get involved. “It’s a great team-building effort for different corporations and different groups where they can come in and bring a team in here and volunteer for a few hours and short food or whatever they need them to do.”

How it worksSheahan calls St. Felix Pantry a “no judgement zone,” saying there’s an easy process for those who are in need of help to participate.

“It’s a very easy form that they need to fill out with no income requirements,” he said. “We know a lot of people are struggling out here in this community right now, in the world in general, I’m sorry to say,” Sheahan said. “It’s a very simple process for them to just fill out a little form. All we do is keep track of who they are so they only come once a week.”

The pantry is open nine hours per week, from 9 a.m. to noon Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and in those nine hours, they serve more than 500 customers.

The customers check in when they arrive, and they get a full basket of groceries, Shehan said.

“Our mission is just to serve whoever needs the food,” he said. “There’s a need for the food distribution these days, because we know that that’s a major issue in this country overall. ... About 63% of our people that we serve come from Sandoval County and 35% come from Bernalillo County, but we serve anyone in New Mexico. ... I think we’re the only pantry in the metro area that basically has no income requirements, and they just have to be a resident of New Mexico. They can come every week.”

Other servicesFood distribution isn’t the only thing St. Felix Pantry does. Sheahan says they also have a referral service where the organization pays utility bills or rent for a month, up to $1,000, when people are really struggling. That program is a bit more limited, though.

“It’s only one time that they can come in here. There are some income requirements for that, but it’s amazing how many people we get that need the extra support,” Sheahn said.

He siad they are looking at partnering with more organizations in the community for that program with focus on Rio Rancho and Sandoval County, though he knows they get a lot of people “coming up the hill.”

“We want to partner with a lot more organizations, because we know we can’t do it all ourselves.”

And, Sheahan said, they’re looking at bringing back some form of the “learning labs” the pantry had before COVID-19 struck, possibly after the first of the year.

“We’re looking at possibly putting some new computers in where people can come in that don’t have access to the internet, and if they want to search for a job or they want to search for access to some health needs, they can use our computers when we’re open,” he said.

For more information on St. Felix Pantry or to learn how to donate or volunteer, visit at stfelixpantry.org.