Jeanna Duerscherl | The Roanoke Times

Mail carrier Kim Wachter loads bags of donated food into her postal truck Saturday. The donations are part of the Stamp Out Hunger food drive.

Jeanna Duerscherl | The Roanoke Times

Volunteers separate donations as mail carriers return from their routes.

Neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet -- nor cans of soup, nor jars of spaghetti sauce, nor boxes of cereal all stuffed into heavy shopping bags -- keeps Kim Wachter from making her appointed rounds.

As the letter carrier worked her route Saturday at the Bluestone Park housing complex in Northeast Roanoke, plastic bags full of food were waiting at many of her stops.

After depositing letters, bills and magazines into mailboxes, Wachter picked up the food and lugged it back to her mail truck. She didn't mind the extra weight or the added time to her eight-hour route.

"It's for a good cause," Wachter said, figuring she could skip lunch that day for the people who can't afford to buy one.

Across the region and the country, thousands of letter carriers such as Wachter participated Saturday in Stamp Out Hunger, an annual food drive in which the public was asked to make donations by leaving bags of nonperishable items where their mail is delivered.

The drive will help restock the shelves of food banks, including the Southwestern Virginia Second Harvest Food Bank.

With the assistance of the U.S. Postal Service, the effort put a new twist on the old saying: "Neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet, nor hail shall keep the postmen from their appointed rounds."

Letter carriers in Roanoke and about 30 surrounding communities participated in the drive, according to Bill Roop, president of the local branch of the National Association of Letter Carriers, one of the event's sponsors.

Wachter, a 20-year veteran of the Postal Service who's seen her share of food drives, was not surprised to find so many donations waiting for her at Bluestone Park, a public housing development.

"The ones that don't have are the ones that give more," she said.

Chris and Lorie Spencer, residents of the complex, had filled a bag with cans of soup. "We've been in a situation where we needed some extra food, so if we can give back, we try to," Lorie Spencer said.

Last year, letter carriers in the Roanoke Valley collected more than 137,000 pounds of food. The goal this year was 150,000 pounds.

Roop and Wachter said it appeared donations were plentiful this year, despite a sagging economy and soaring gas prices. "If it wasn't for the residents, this could never happen," Roop said.

Details on whether the goal of 150,000 pounds had been reached were not available by 6 p.m. Saturday

Now in its 16th year, Stamp Out Hunger is held every spring, a time when supplies at food banks are dwindling and when schoolchildren who qualify for free or reduced-priced lunches will soon be home for the summer.

According to America's Second Harvest, the nation's largest network of emergency food providers, 35 million Americans are hungry or on the brink of hunger. Of the households served by the network, 38 percent of the members are children younger than 18.

An estimated 230,000 letter carriers across the country collected more than 70 million pounds of food last year during the drive, which also is supported by the United Way and Campbell Soup Co.