St. Francis students pulled off their biggest Thanksgiving food drive in 30 years last month.

Led by the Service Club, St. Francis High School and the St. Francis community raised the money to purchase enough food to feed 500 families in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties on Thanksgiving Day: $5,000 for turkeys and more than $10,000 for canned and dry foods.

Approximately 50 student volunteers, along with faculty and staff members, assembled individual packages of food and loaded the trucks for distribution. Each package contained a turkey, canned goods, dry foods, oil, sugar, bread and cake.

The St. Vincent DePaul Society of parishes in Los Altos, Mountain View and Sunnyvale, the Catholic Worker Organization of Redwood City, and the social workers and nurses of El Camino Hospital aided St. Francis in the effort.

The Thanksgiving food drive, a tradition of 30 years’ standing, is the one outreach program that draws the support of the entire St. Francis community every year.