“I don’t know what I feel,” said Norma Flores, 54. “Sometimes I think probably my life was supposed to be done because I don’t have work. I don’t have anything.”
Flores and her friend Luceanne Taufa were among thousands of Clark County residents who waited in line recently to pick up frozen turkeys and boxes of sweet potatoes, cranberries, onions, oranges and two different packages of stuffing during a food drive at the Cashman Center’s parking lot.
Flores thought she was beyond receiving such help. She relied on the Salvation Army decades ago when she was finding her way in her new home of Nevada. The single mother raised six children while working at Del Taco and El Torito restaurants. The paychecks improved 20 years ago when she started as a busser and later became a waitress at Fiesta Henderson, a local casino and hotel near her home. She earned $22 an hour with tips. It was enough to live comfortably.
Now, one morning each week, she drives from the town of Henderson to the Culinary Academy of Las Vegas to pick up a box of free food with Taufa.