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THATCHER - News 4 has brought you many stories about the Community Food Bank during the Great Recession and many of you have stepped up and donated thousands of pounds of food through various drives.

Rural communities all over Southern Arizona are also in need. The emergency Food Assistance Program, known as "T-fap", at the USDA and the food bank are making sure desperately needed food gets to the out of way places in our area.

News 4 followed along on one of the monthly runs.

"Right now I'm loading the frozen goods." Danny Padilla has been with the Food Bank for 3 years. "My position is a rural TEFAP driver."

"Today I'm making the distribution run for Thatcher. I usually get here at 5, so that I can be out of here anytime between 5:15 and 5:30."

Before the sun is up, Padillia pulls his semi truck onto Country Club Road and heads for I-10. It is a 2 ½ hour drive to Thatcher. He covers up to 4000 miles every month, delivering over 200,000 pounds of food to nearly 30 small towns in Arizona.

Every 2nd Wednesday is the Thatcher run.

Once at the ball park on the edge of town, "Bring em forward. That's good." Edee Smith is in charge.

"Good thing I used to be an Army truck driver, she says with a laugh. "I know how to unload a truck."

"I got two more coming off!" Smith shouts out to her volunteers.

"We're looking between 550 families and 600 families coming through today."

Smith, a volunteer herself, coordinates the other volunteers on this 38 degree morning. Under the snow dusted Mount Graham, about 50 cars have qued up before 9a.m.

"Would they be able to make it to Tucson?" News 4 asks Smith. "No. Some of these people haven't got cars good enough to drive from Thatcher to Safford some days you know."

In Thatcher, the food bank is all drive through.

"If they can't stand in a line; if they are unable to. If they have children and they can't get out of a car and can't leave them. They can drive through and gives them the opportunity to. They don't have to worry about leaving their kids somewhere unattended; makes it easier for them."

Not just easier, essential for the folks out here in the country.

"Oh I don't think I could make it without it. And some of these people are very worse off than I am," EvaMou Werner tells us. "I'm a new widow and haven't got that income from my husband any longer."

"I think its great and we deliver to the ones that has children and we deliver to the shut-ins," says longtime resident Rozen Teague.

And that is exactly what motivates Smith, the retired Army truck driver, to do all this work.

"It's hard when you don't know where your next meal is coming from. And so I do it for the children," Smith says as she fights back tears. "I do it for the older people that are on fixed incomes and they don't have the money."

In 2009, Padillia delivered 2.5 million pounds of food to the rural distribution sites. That is over 50 percent more than 2008.