By Tracy Kimball
The Herald
ROCK HILL, S.C. — Rock Hill first responders and volunteers on Tuesday loaded the back of an ambulance with some unusual passengers: dozens of boxes of cereal.
Firefighters, law enforcement and medical personnel rallied the York County community to donate hundreds of boxes of cereal to Pilgrim’s Inn during the annual Healthy Over Hungry Cereal Drive. Over a 12 day period, the agencies collected enough cereal to feed thousands of people, said Renee O’Neil, Piedmont Medical Center’s community relations and communications manager.
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Pilgrim’s Inn — a Rock Hill agency that helps feed people throughout South Carolina — weighs the cereal after it’s donated to get a clear picture of how many servings people donated. In 2024, donations equaled 20,000 servings.
On Tuesday, leaders at Pilgrim’s Inn were still counting how many servings of cereal they have in the 2025 load.
The goal of the cereal drive is to feed children during the summer months when they are out of school, said Lemeila Crockett, emergency assistance manager for Pilgrim’s Inn.
“It helps the children when they wake up in the morning, they’ll have breakfast,” Crockett said. “This is a big impact for the children and adults, as well.”
And the cereal will feed people for months, she said. Pilgrim’s Inn just handed out their last servings from the 2024 donations.
“We still had a few boxes that we just got rid of last week or so,” Crockett said.
The cereal drive started 15 years ago in Detroit when a group of nurses from Tenet Healthcare — Piedmont’s parent company — noticed young patients lost access to school breakfast. Piedmont joined the cereal drive several years ago, said Teresa Urquhart, market CEO of the hospital.
“We appreciate that every box does make a huge difference and can impact children in our community,” Urquhart said to first responders, law enforcement and hospital leaders Tuesday before the group loaded the cereal into an ambulance and a truck to take to Pilgrim’s Inn.
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