Dire straits in Marin A former Mill Valley teacher who never thought she’d need the food bank faces a hardscrabble retirement

Dire straits in Marin A former Mill Valley teacher who never thought she’d need the food bank faces a hardscrabble retirement

Sheryl Boucher selects a tomato, a carrot, an onion, a chicken breast, a can of corn, a pear and a baguette from metal tubs set up on tables covered in red-and-white checkered tablecloths. A friend recently told her about this food pantry located inside the community room at the Hilarita Apartments, low-income housing in Tiburon, where anyone in the community can fill a bag with free groceries.

About Hidden Hunger Food banks are popping up in wealthy enclaves. Senior centers struggle next to tech campuses. Why does this paradox exist? To understand food insecurity in the Bay Area, The Chronicle spent months with those experiencing it on a daily basis.

It’s a surprising location for Marin County’s newest food pantry. Through a window, Richardson Bay sparkles, and Belvedere, one of the Bay Area’s most exclusive enclaves, is less than a mile away. The Hilarita complex climbs up a hill, and both the buildings and the landscaping around them appear carefully tended, as if to blend into their pristine surroundings.

Situated on two islands, Belvedere is a city of 2,000 with a median household income of $178,000. Here, homes top out at $13 million for a six-bedroom. A mile further is a plot of land in Tiburon that recently made the news when it went on the market for $110 million.

“In this affluent area, you wouldn’t think so many people would benefit from a program like the food bank,” says Boucher, 72, who wears long necklaces over a drapey sweater. Her low voice has a slightly patrician air.

Even in one of the wealthiest U.S. counties, her situation is not unique. One-third of seniors in Marin County live below the self-sufficiency standard of $27,000 per year to cover basic costs of living, according to the SF-Marin Food Bank.

Overall, the median household income in Marin is more than $100,000, and the median home value is $1.1 million.

“Like in the rest of the country, there are pockets of poverty even in the wealthiest areas,” says Edith Cadena of the SF-Marin Food Bank, which supplies food to pantries in the county.

Boucher, who grew up outside Philadelphia as the daughter of a University of Pennsylvania professor, didn’t expect to end up in this position; in fact, she used to donate to the food bank. She came to the Bay Area in 1968 because “things were happening in San Francisco.” She opened a preschool in 1979, but after it burned down in 2006, along with her home, she hasn’t been able to get a teaching job since. To make extra cash, she is a caregiver for seniors “more elderly than I.”

Boucher would not disclose her income from retirement savings and a small social security benefit, other than to say it’s mostly eaten up by the rent on her Mill Valley cottage, which increases every year by $100 a month. She’s constantly finding things to cut back on — such as a newspaper subscription — and is on waiting lists for subsidized housing.

The retired preschool teacher had never considered accepting free groceries until August, when a friend told her about the Hilarita pantry. She now picks up groceries from the two nearby food pantries each week, which she says has saved her hundreds of dollars, and goes to a free lunch for Marin seniors every Friday.

“It’s a social thing, and building community is important,” she says of both the lunches and food pantry.

A friend recently suggested she apply for CalFresh — food stamps. That is another thing she never considered before, until things got difficult enough for her to change her thinking.

“I think a big piece is getting over your pride,” she says. “I’m in dire straits here.”

Tara Duggan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tduggan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @taraduggan

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