Boxes for Heroes, AMVETS continue efforts to send care packages

WASILLA – It seems like there’s just no stopping the Boxes for Heroes program.

Frank Roach, who has been heading up the effort to send care packages to service members deployed in war zones overseas since March of 2006, said he’s sent out 6,900 boxes and expects to have sent 8,500 by the end of the year. His hope is that sometime in 2011 he’ll pass 10,000.

“After 2011 we’ll be sending boxes out on a weekly basis,” Roach said. “That’s how many names we have.”

Those names of service members who could use a care package come from a lot of places. Roach works closely with the Alaska National Guard, but also collects names from friends and family of people serving abroad. The effort started as a program he helped set up through the local branch of AMVETS.

“They wanted to do a fund-raiser and I said how about care packages?

He said the idea occurred to him because he’d sent a package to his nephew who was then serving abroad. Since that AMVETS effort, he’s branched out on his own and set up his own non-profit. He’s got a website — boxesforheroes.com — where he hopes to eventually start posting videos of the efforts. He’s also relocated from the Valley to the Kenai Peninsula, but that had more to do with his personal life than anything.

“I’m legally blind and I have a guide dog with me. I moved to Kenai because it’s a lot easier,” Roach said. “Everything’s within a $5 cab ride for me.”

And he hasn’t entirely left the Valley behind. Speaking Thursday, he said he planned to spend the weekend here, from Friday to maybe Monday at Three Bears on the Palmer-Wasilla Highway, collecting items for his care packages. Customers walking in pick up a list of what the program needs and hand the items they elected to purchase to Roach on the way out.

Those items range from hard candies and instant coffee to lip balm, razors, pens and pencils, foot powder and bug spray. Since the items going into the boxes are all donated and so is the labor, there’s really only one big expense for the program.

“Our main expense is shipping. We get a $2 break on every box from the postal service,” he said. “It’s normally $14.50 for the military. We get them for $12.50.”

He said now and then he’ll be able to secure a spot for the boxes on a military transport. But, for the most part he relies on the post office.

Later this month, Roach will be at the Mat-Su Boys and Girls Club in Wasilla putting together the packages Dec. 18 and 19, while other people collect items at Three Bears.

He said he’s got the box-assembling process down to a science; he sets it up like an assembly line with a list on each box detailing what goes inside. That list is later used to comply with a Department of Homeland Security regulation that says packages heading to troops have to be labeled with a list of what’s inside.

“It’s set up for 5 year olds,” Roach said of the assembly line. “All they have to do is read the index card on the front of the tote.”

Anyone who wants to lend a hand is invited, Roach said.

“The more the merrier.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.