By Sam Richards
Mercury News
MARTINEZ, Calif. —Luigi Daberdaku has been making sandwiches at his downtown deli for years, but never this many all at once.
And he’s now looking for some help from people willing to supply meats or do the actual building of sandwiches at his Luigi’s Deli at the corner of Main and Castro Streets downtown, to take to firefighters and other first responders helping fight the Napa and Sonoma County fires.
Since Thursday, there’s been an assembly line set up in his shop, right near the shelves with the specialty sodas. “Cutting the meat, cheese, lettuce, onions, cucumbers, I need volunteers... plus I need more meat; we ran out of meat today after 275 sandwiches,” Daberdaku said Monday.
By that afternoon, as he prepared to make his fifth delivery trip, he and his assembled teams had made almost 1,500 sandwiches. It started Thursday, Oct. 12, when he and volunteers made 150 sandwiches by midday. He took them to Fairfield that first day for further distribution; since then, he has gone straight to the hard-hit areas, mostly in Napa, himself.
“I might try a new location,” he said Monday.
The idea is for the volunteer teams to build the sandwiches each afternoon, which he will deliver the following afternoon, for as long as they’re needed, or as long as he can afford it. He is happy to have volunteers come and help, or bring meat or cheese. Any kind of standard deli meat will work, he said, noting, “Swiss is the best cheese.
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