Baker City church preps Thanksgiving food boxes for Baker, Union counties

Published 8:23 am Tuesday, November 25, 2025

Seventh-day Adventist Church carries on 75-year tradition

BAKER CITY — Valerie Tachenko is speechless for about 5 seconds, staring at the check in her hand.

“Oh my stars,” she finally says. “I think I’m going to cry. That’s phenomenal.”

The check, $1,995 from the First Presbyterian Church, will help the Seventh-day Adventist Church purchase turkeys and turkey breasts for 355 Thanksgiving food boxes this week.

Tachenko, 70, helps organize this annual tradition, which she said dates back about 75 years.

She first helped deliver boxes when she was 6.

Each year, schools and social service programs refer families or individuals to receive a box. Tachenko said most years they deliver about 100 boxes, and the highest, at 487, followed the closure of Ellingson Lumber Company’s Baker City sawmill in 1996.

Last year, a request came from Union County, and Tachenko said 50 of the 150 boxes went to the neighboring county.

This year, volunteers will deliver 120 boxes to Union County — North Powder, Elgin, Union and La Grande — and distribute the rest, 202, in Baker City, Haines, Sumpter, Richland, Halfway, Unity and Whitney.

In total, the boxes will help feed 1,128 people.

And they don’t carry over any money or food from the previous year.

“We start at zero, and we end with zero,” she said. “God does it.”

Filling the boxes

Each fall, the church relies on donations and food drives. This year several food collections happened in Union County, and the church did a Baker City food drive in early November.

The First Presbyterian Church donates the offering from three Sundays to purchase turkeys.

“We have really generous people who care, and that’s huge,” Tachenko said. “It wouldn’t work without it.”

Each box has the makings for a Thanksgiving dinner — turkey, stuffing, homemade rolls, pies and potatoes, which this year were donated, by the truckload, from Rohner Farms.

Then, volunteers add more food based on the number of family members. Tachenko said the hope is to provide enough food for several days — pasta, soup, chili, beans, pancake mix, cereal, cake mixes and whatever else came in with donations.

“It makes a big difference in their food budget,” she said.

Volunteers deliver boxes on Wednesday, Nov. 26.

“God provides the food, God provides the names,” Tachenko said. “We’re just the hands and feet.”