Jewel Pedi's Obituary
When Jewel Pedi asked volunteers to harvest surplus crops for Ventura County’s regional food bank, she went in the fields and picked strawberries and carrots alongside them.
The faith-driven dynamo who helped launched Food Share, the nonprofit that now feeds more than 250,000 people a year, practiced what she preached. There was one exception.
Penny Rodriguez grew up on Ventura’s Petit Avenue in the home her parents, Jewel and John Pedi, used as a food distribution center for Vietnam War veterans and anyone else couldn't afford meals.
“I was told not to talk to strangers and yet they had our garage open to strangers," Rodriguez said. The unspoken trust confused the then 12-year-old girl but now serves as an emblem of her parents' mission to help others. "It made people believe the source was valid. They felt they could go and ask without being judged."
Jewel Pedi died on May 9 at her daughter's home in Bullhead City, Arizona. She was 98. Her passing drew tributes from across Ventura County.
Former U.S. Rep. Elton Gallegly of Simi Valley remembered his first phone conversation with the small woman with the oversized heart.
“She needed 100 turkeys and (asked) how can I get them. We got it for her the next day,” Gallegly said, voice breaking at the news of Pedi's death.
“She was a saint,” he said. “She cared about people. She not only cared about them but did something about it.”
Jewel Flight grew up in Forrest Park, Illinois. During World War II, she followed in the footsteps of Rosie the Riveter, joining the workforce to help fill the gap left by the men called into military services. She worked for Ameritorp, a company that made torpedoes.
“My mom felt so proud of that because she felt like she really helped the country," Rodrguez said.
She married John Pedi Jr., an Army veteran and draftsman who later worked at the Point Mugu Naval Base. The couple moved west because of their son’s asthma and relocated from Covina to Ventura in the early 1970s.
She and her husband were born-again Christians driven by Biblical teachings about feeding others. She and a small group of friends banded together in the '70s to find a way to feed Vietnam veterans who were living under an overpass in Ventura.
They filled the Pedi's two-car garage with boxes of food. The burgeoning efforts widened into what they named FOOD Share for Food on our Doorsteps.
"She and her friends from church decided neighbors needed to take care of neighbors," said Monica White, Food Share president and CEO.
Pedi and others worked with state and federal lawmakers. The food bank moved from the Petit Avenue garage to an old fire station in Saticoy that would occasionally be struck by golf balls from a nearby course.
Pedi, who served for years as the nonprofit’s executive director, was involved in every aspect of the operation, said the Rev. Virgil Nelson, another co-founder who now lives in Roseville.
She worked with farmers to arrange times after crops were harvested when surplus food could be picked. She coordinated the volunteers who picked the crops and joined them in the field.
"She was an incredible organizer. She had a head for how to put things together," said Nelson, former pastor of Oak View First Baptist Church.
The food bank moved from Saticoy to Oxnard. Pedi led the charge for the $1 million federal grant that enabled them to pay off the building in a feat celebrated with a mortgage-burning party.
Her husband died of congestive heart failure in 1996. Pedi finally retired in her 80s. She moved to Bullhead City, two doors away from Rodriguez. She still called Food Share to make sure the nonprofit was meeting its mission.
White remembered a visit in 2017. Pedi marveled at the food that filled the warehouse of a nonprofit that continued to grow and now distributes 22 million pounds of food a year.
“She said, ‘there’s too much food here. Why is there so much food? We need to get this out to the neighbors,” White said.
Pedi was a world traveler who journeyed to see her children and her grandchildren in Belgium, Guam and Japan.
Her family was immense. She had three children, including a son who died in 2019, 12 grandchildren, 32 great- grandchildren and 15 great-great grandchildren.
“She was the best mom I could have ever asked for,” Rodriguez said. “She was such a powerful persona. You wanted to be like her.”
Her memory faltered in recent years. But she talked vividly of the decades she spent at Food Share until the end.
“That never left her,” Rodriguez said. “If you started a Food Share conversation, she was in it.”
The food bank’s logo includes the letter “O” shaped as a heart. It’s called Jewel, White said.
“She is in our logo forever. She’s in our heart forever,” White said. “She’a going to go down in history as a champion of feeding neighbors.”
A funeral and burial service will be held May 29 at Ivy Lawn Memorial Park, 5400 Valentine Road, Ventura. The time is still being finalized. The family asks people who want to honor Pedi make donations to Food Share.
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