Let’s talk turkey.
Tevani and Jeff Liotard had family over for Thanksgiving.
Nothing unusual about that until you look at the turkey count — 100 birds to feed 1,600 people.
The Liotards, for the past seven years, have opened their restaurant — Mountain Mike’s Pizza on North Main Street — for a free Thanksgiving meal. It’s a true Family City affair bringing together Manteca Rotary, of which Liotard is a member, the Sunrise Kiwanis, Manteca Police Officers Association, and Manteca Interact. Joining them on Thursday was a host of volunteers from Del Webb at Woodbridge to New Hope Church and Mormon missionaries assigned to the Manteca stake.
And while Jeff will be the first to tell you it isn’t about him and that it wouldn’t happen without dozens of other people, Jeff is the quintessential Manteca family member.
The only thing bigger than his heart, is perhaps his ingenuity.
If you doubt that consider this: If you were stressed preparing for a dozen or so family members showing up for dinner just think what Jeff goes through coordinating for 1,600, especially given he’s a hands-on kind of guy.
It’s little wonder late Thursday morning when he sat down to have a bite to eat after working all night he fell asleep slumped over his plate. Minutes later, he was back up running the show.
Jeff’s goal is to make sure not a single person goes without on Thanksgiving, and that includes not just Manteca but Ripon and Lathrop as well.
He is also the Manteca Rotary’s egg man coordinating the service club’s successful Super Bowl Sunday Omelet & Breakfast that serves 1,000 people and raises funds for community endeavors.
Jeff does this on top of running multiple family ventures as well as taking money out of his pocket as well as his time to trek to Honduras once or twice a year with fellow Rotarian and optometrist Fred Stellhorn plus other volunteers to help fit impoverished people with free eye glasses. Their last trip — just weeks before the Thanksgiving dinner — included fitting people with artificial hands.
To say the guy who played on the line as a Ripon High football player and ended up falling head over heels when he first met his future bride cares about his community and people qualifies and an understatement of gigantic proportions.
Tevani is no slouch either when it comes to hard work and giving back to the community. The Manteca Unified elementary physical education director advise Manteca Interact — a high school service club associated with Rotary — for example. Interact club members learn from the best when it comes to caring about their community. Their manpower helps make a lot of fundraising events succeed from the Boys & Girls Club Telethon to their signature event, Downtown Safe Halloween.
 The neat thing is the fact Jeff and Tevani aren’t abnormalities in Manteca. They’re part of the social fabric that strengthens Manteca every day from volunteer Give Every Child a Chance tutors, the legion of Del Webb volunteers, church groups, and others such as Charlie Halford.
Halford is a retired Manteca Police Chief who is about as tireless as volunteers come. He’s there when the Boys & Girls Club needs practically anything, when Give Every Child a Chance or the Great Valley Bookfest calls, or any need arises that his expertise and unparalleled work ethic can make happen.
This is a guy whose career was about putting his life on the line to serve and protect his community — including saving two people from the second floor of a burning downtown hotel as a rookie officer — and who now continues to serve that same community as a volunteer extraordinaire.
It needs to be made clear that Mt. Mike’s on Thursday was crawling with people who care.
Police officers are supposed to be non-caring and inhuman as the narrative in some quarters goes these days. They are more officers like Detective Sergeant Stephen Schluer who step up to the plate every chance they get to make their community a better place when they are off duty. Schluer and his wife Thera are a team effort when it comes to community endeavors while at the same time being extensively involved in their children’s lives. He also serves as a Manteca Unified school trustee. Schuler was there Thursday handing the turkey that volunteers such as Manteca Unified School District Superintendent spent time earlier in the week brining and the likes of councilman elect Gary Singh, council candidate Jeff Zellner and a small army of volunteers then cooked starting late Wednesday night until dawn Thursday so no one in  their Manteca family would go without.
As for those naysayers that say no one cares anymore, they are — with a thousand apologizes to the feathered creature Ben Franklin once described as a noble bird — turkeys.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com