At 84 and 79, Colorado Springs' pantry volunteers are the retirement plan nobody expected

Three hours a week, every week, 84-year-old Jerry Fogltance shows up to work at Mercy's Gate food pantry in Colorado Springs. He is not the exception there — he is the pattern. Keith Klukey, 79, has volunteered at the organisation for about 18 years, and adults over 50 make up the majority of its volunteer force. Their work adds up to something large: in 2025, Mercy's Gate served 17,940 people, including 16,803 through its food pantry. BEACON Senior News, which profiles the pair, frames it simply — retirement, for a growing number of older Americans, looks less like stopping and more like being needed on a schedule. Fogltance and Klukey are not filling time. By the pantry's own numbers, they are a meaningful share of how a city feeds itself.

SDG 2 · Zero hunger — Mechanism: community action