Soup Lady Ginger Passarelli lends inspiration to Snoqualmie Valley Women in Business to make the world a better place

"How do you make the world a better place?" asked Snoqualmie Valley Women in Business Board President Jacqueline Fairbrass, at the organization's Sept. 14 luncheon meeting.

“How do you make the world a better place?” asked Snoqualmie Valley Women in Business Board President Jacqueline Fairbrass, at the organization’s Sept. 14 luncheon meeting.

Participants were asked to answer that question as part of their introductions to the others at their tables, at the start of the meeting.

Snoqualmie Valley Women in Business made the world a better place, on that day, by inviting the inspirational Ginger Passarelli to speak at the meeting.

Passarelli, a restaurateur and caterer from Black Diamond, is one of The Soup Ladies, a group of critical-incident-trained women and men who respond to the same sorts of emergencies that police and firefighters are called to.

The difference is that while first responders are rescuing and caring for victims of crimes and disasters — the devastating Oso mudslide in 2014, the 2009 murder of four Lakewood police officers in a coffee shop — the Soup Ladies are caring for those first responders.

“They need to eat, but they have a job to do,” Passarelli told the group of about 60 silent women and men Wednesday. “So we give them a hot meal and a hug, and we look into their eyes, and we listen.”

Passarelli was inspired to start the Soup Ladies after Hurricane Katrina. She read about the emergency workers, and the need for volunteers, and realized “There was no one to feed the first responders.”

Not long after, there was someone to feed them. Passarelli, with donated equipment and an initial grant from King County, started feeding emergency responders with food from her own restaurant’s kitchen and a group of volunteers that has grown to about 50 now.

She got the needed training for FEMA critical incident certification and started making calls, asking “Do you need the Soup Ladies?”

Often, the answer was yes. Since starting, the Soup Ladies have served more than 240,000 meals,

As Passarelli spoke and showed slides of some of the group’s adventures, she laughed as often as she cried.

Of her appearance on Queen Latifah’s talk show, she said “She’s tall, and she wears high heels!” And of their help at a training exercise for a SWAT team, she said “These guys are my heroes.”

Displaying a photo of the mobile kitchen, a food truck, she said “It’s an amazing kitchen. Out of that kitchen, we can do 600 meals in 90 minutes, when we’re doing soup.”

On an image from the 16 days the Soup Ladies helped at the Oso disaster, she paused. “I still cry over it. It’s been two and a half years.”

Cooking was, of course, the main thing the Soup Ladies did to help everyone through the Oso ordeal, but it wasn’t all. They brought blankets and stuffed animals to comfort families. They, as always, kept the food supply secure. They listened. They peeled hundreds of oranges.

The rescuers, swathed in hazardous materials protection, Passarelli explained, “were so contaminated, they couldn’t peel an orange.” She stopped again, wiped her eyes, and said “So we did it for ’em.”

That experience taught her what she now tells everyone, “Every single one of us can do something that’s going to make the community better. No matter how big or small, to the person receiving it, it’s huge.”

An audience member asked Passarelli, “How does this group help you?”

Mainly, with donations and by volunteering, Passarelli responded. Not everyone cooks, she pointed out, and the organization could use help with bookkeeping, publicity and other needs, too.

Her appearance helped the organization to emphasize the theme of the meeting, altruism.

“If we live our lives generously, that is a blessing for our communities,” she said.

Learn more about the Soup Ladies at http://www.soupladies.org.