CONCORD — "I need some help."

Jamie Vasquez stands in the cold, waiting to load the paper bag from the food pantry into his battered pickup truck so he can replenish his near-empty cupboard.

Vasquez has no job. When he can, he works in construction as a handyman.

"The economy is very bad," the 40-year-old Concord man said. "This month is very slow."

Nearly 10,000 new clients began getting food from the Monument Crisis Center from July through September.

It's a trend seen around the country. The number of Americans without stable access to food stood at 49 million last year — the highest since the government began tracking hunger in 1995, according to a report released this month by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Nearly 15 percent of households were short on food at some point during 2008, up from 11 percent in 2007, according to the report.

"We are seeing people who are very desperate, who are very down on their luck," said Monument Crisis Center Director Sandra Scherer. "They are just wrung out. They are at their breaking point."

Those who came to the center this week got some Thanksgiving extras — a turkey and a special basket of goodies.

Shaunette Buchanan, of Antioch, was at the center Tuesday for the first time. She was glad to get a turkey for Thanksgiving dinner for her 3- and 1-year-old sons. Otherwise, they would likely be eating spaghetti as they usually do.

She gets

"When the food stamps start running out, the extra assistance helps," she said. She does not know of anywhere else she could go to get extra groceries.

Most of the crisis center's clients are from Concord, but they also come from around the county — Pittsburg, Antioch and even Walnut Creek. More than a third of the clients are households headed by single mothers.

About 1,800 households — a total of about 7,000 people — receive food from the center once a month, Scherer said. That is up from last year, when the center served about 1,200 households per month.

The crisis center has been able to keep up with the increased demand, but only by aggressively soliciting donations of such things as backyard produce and leftover beans and rice from a Chipotle restaurant.

The Thanksgiving extras came from various sources: 250 turkeys from the Morongo Band of Mission Indians, 100 turkeys from the De La Salle High School football team and the St. Francis school cheerleaders, for example.

"It's a blessing," said Nicole Knight, of Pittsburg, as she waited in line. "I don't have the funds to buy food."

Reach Paul Thissen at 925-943-8163.