College Corps members substituted for National Guard to keep Inland Empire food banks running; Pasadena City College partners on fire recovery

An unidentified speaker said College Corps members from the College of the Desert took on roles previously filled by the National Guard to keep large Inland Empire food banks operating when volunteers vanished during the COVID surge.

"We had to deploy the national guard in order to keep our food banks operational," the speaker said, describing an early-pandemic emergency that strained local food distribution. The speaker added that as the National Guard drew down, "we supplanted the National Guard with college corps members from the College of the Desert."

The speaker framed the College Corps as a critical workforce for both pandemic-era food distribution and later disaster recovery. They said Pasadena City College recently entered a public–private partnership, funded through the college’s foundation, to bring College Corps to the campus. "Those College Corps members are gonna specifically be working on fire recovery in Altadena," the speaker said.

Details such as the number of College Corps members deployed, exact dates of National Guard involvement, and the financial terms of the Pasadena City College foundation support were not specified in the transcript. No formal motions, votes, or statutory authorities were referenced in these remarks.

What happens next was not recorded here: the remarks describe operational deployments and a newly announced college partnership but do not document any formal decision, contract signing, or funding appropriation on the record.