When Paxton Shanks sent out invitations for her fifth birthday party in 2018, she didn’t ask for toys, a tablet, or a new pet. She wanted canned corn.
For her past few birthdays, the 9-year-old Belmont County resident has requested donations to the nearby St. Clairsville Food Pantry (a Mid-Ohio Food Collective partner agency) in lieu of gifts. In particularly good years, Paxton and her mother have delivered as many as 150 items donated by family and friends.
“Sometimes we’ll have one wagon full. Sometimes we’ll have more than one,” Paxton said. “We started doing it and just never stopped.”
Paxton will turn 10 in late 2023, and this will be her fifth year donating food. While Paxton’s mother Lacey Paxton (Lacey’s surname is also her daughter’s first name) said she was the one who initially suggested a birthday donation drive, the tradition has been kept alive by her daughter’s drive to help others.
“She loves giving. She has a heart that’s enormous,” said Lacey. “She wants people to have access to the things she had.”
As a mother, a past recipient of food assistance, and a current case worker at the Belmont County Department of Job & Family Services, Lacey knows the difference a meal can make. She regularly directs clients to community pantries, and, when Paxton was younger, she experienced food insecurity firsthand.
Originally from St. Clairsville, Lacey started adult life in the military with the Ohio Army National Guard. Over her two tours of duty, she served with three units across central Ohio and deployed once to Iraq. When asked what drew her to serve, Lacey laughed.
“My parents told me no,” she said, smiling. “I’ve always been a little defiant. I march to the beat of my own drum.”
After eight years in the National Guard, she moved back to her hometown and settled down with her now former husband. The marriage became rocky, Lacey said. Her spouse behaved in ways that made her afraid for Paxton’s wellbeing. So, with a 2-year-old daughter to take care of and no other home to go to, she made the choice to leave.
“As a stay-at-home mom with no income, that’s a hard choice to leave your marriage. It was awful. I made that difficult decision,” Lacey said. “I wasn’t going to raise my daughter in that environment.”
Soon after, Lacey took Paxton and moved into an apartment with her sister and 4-year-old nephew. Her mother encouraged her to finish the bachelor’s degree that she’d begun with her veterans’ benefits. She finished classes while sharing childcare duties with her mom and sister. She earned her degree in 2016.
Lacey remembers those lean times well, and she applied for SNAP, WIC, and Medicaid to make ends meet. She vividly recalls crying the first time she went grocery shopping with EBT, adding that she didn’t know how the card worked. Even with help from the benefits programs, there wasn’t always enough to go around.
“There were times I thought, ‘OK, one of us is eating today and one of us isn’t,” Lacey said. “There were times it was really tough. I spent a lot of time robbing Peter to pay Paul. But that’s what parents do. You want your kids to have it better than you had.”
Starting in 2017, Lacey worked two full-time jobs to provide for Paxton and herself. In addition to working days at the city’s municipal utility office, she waited tables at night. She changed in her car between shifts. As hard as things were, Lacey said she never used a food pantry. In hindsight, it’s something she’d do differently.
“I never wanted to be the person who went to a food pantry,” Lacey said. “Knowing what I know now, I would have walked up the street to the pantry and gotten fresh fruit.”
Nowadays, she regularly refers people to the St. Clairsville Food Pantry as part of her job at Belmont County JFS. Lacey interviewed with the county in 2019 and said she cried as she described her personal experience with public benefits. “I’ve been on the other side of that phone,” she remembered saying in her interview.
Lacey and Paxton now have their own place to live in St. Clairsville. They know the staff at the St. Clairsville Food Pantry and enjoy helping their neighbors who live with food insecurity. Paxton, in particular, likes knowing she’s helping look out for her classmates and neighbors—like her mom looked out for her.
“I just like to know that somebody who doesn’t get food as much as we do will get good food and be full that night,” Paxton said. “It’s good to know somebody got food and that I helped.”
