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ailor Alyssa Gauna and Marine-veteran-turned- stay-at-home-dad Abel Garcia are struggling to make ends meet in San Diego—despite the economic stability a military job presumably provides. Gauna’s latest duty assignment brought them here just weeks before four-month-old Ciel was born. “It’s really hard, especially with the baby,” Gauna says. Garcia wears Ciel in a carrier draped with a blanket. He admits to eating as little as possible to stretch the family’s supplies. Between the couple’s financial struggles and their recent move across the country with a newborn, “it’s pretty hard for me to cook,” he says. “[I’m just making] chicken and rice—simple stuff like that. [We’re] not getting a lot of different types of foods.” One in four members of the US military experiences food insecurity, according to the latest and most comprehensive study of this issue published by the research organization RAND Corporation, and prompted by Congress and the Department of Defense (DoD). Considering a recent, staggering rise in living costs in San Diego, it’s possible that the city is home to an even higher concentration of service members who are struggling. San Diego ranks sixth among cities where the cost of living increased the most last year, according to the 2022 Worldwide Cost of Living Report by the Economist Intelligence Unit. The report reviewed 173 cities across the globe. ow much active service members get paid depends on rank, years served, and number of dependents. However, their salary largely stays the same at the federal level, regardless of where they’re stationed. In some locations, they may receive a Cost-of-Living Allowance (COLA), but San Diego is not one of those places, even with its soaring cost of living. “Military pay doesn’t go as far here [in San Diego] as it does in other areas of the country,” says Tracy Owens, a project manager at Support the Enlisted Project (STEP). “Our service members are the military’s most valuable asset,” she emphasizes. “They need to be able to focus, [to] take care of their family.” Owens does what she can to help. In the first few months of the pandemic, she started delivering groceries to military families, as well as organizing giveaways where service members and their loved ones could obtain food and other staples. At a recent event at STEP’s headquarters in Scripps Ranch, Owens helped 432 families—including the Garcia- Gaunas—access free groceries and basic household items like diapers, wet wipes, and children’s clothes. STEP is one of many nonprofits dedicated to aiding service members and their families. Others include Courage to Call, H
Abel Garcia, Alyssa Gauna, and their baby, Ciel, at a food distribution event for military families. Hosted by San Diego–based nonprofit STEP in February 2023, the event also provided diapers, clothes, and other goods to more than 400 families.
Jewish Family Services, San Diego Military Outreach Ministries, US4Warriors Foundation, USO San Diego, Veterans Village of San Diego, Wounded Warrior Homes, and The Armed Services YMCA, along with Feeding San Diego, which provides groceries for the different programs. “To see that our active military forces could be affected by food insecurity is disturbing,” says Feeding San Diego executive director Bob Kamensky, who served in the Navy for 35 years. It wasn’t easy for the Garcia-Gauna family to attend food distributions. “I never imagined that [it] was something we would do,” Gauna says. “At first, Abel was not open to it. He was like, ‘We don’t need it, we are fine, we will get by.’ And then I did it. It’s something that we needed, and I think he’s open to it now because he sees how much weight it takes off us.”
47 SAN DIEGO MAGAZINE
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