What’s a better time to give back to the community than Thanksgiving?

At Lathrop High, students from the Leadership Program did just that with the annual Scavenger Hunt held this past week.

The result was record numbers and, more importantly, feeding those in need.

Here’s how they did it – Leadership students set aside an evening to venture around the City of Lathrop, collecting canned foods and other nonperishable items.

According to Activities Director Allison Birakos, students were put into teams while racing against the clock in a friendly competition, seeing which group could collect the most donations in only 60 minutes.

“Each item they collected was then donated to the Second Harvest Food Bank to allow for the less fortunate to enjoy a proper meal during the holiday season,” she said.

This year, Birakos indicated that the winning group managed to gather nearly 200 canned food items in just under that hour, going door to door throughout several neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, the other groups were not too far behind in terms of donations.

“That put the total amount of cans collected this year was a whopping 770, a new record for our Leadership class,” said Birakos, who also thanked those who gave on behalf of her students.