Runners' found money fills shelves at St. Charles food pantry

They dived into dumpsters for dimes, chipped ice particles off frozen quarters and chased dollar bills for miles across St. Charles and Geneva.

Then they gave it all away.

Organizer Glen Kamps and his fellow runners wouldn't have it any other way. For the seventh year in a row, the Next Step Running Club donated hard-earned coins and cash picked up along their Saturday jogs to the Salvation Army food pantry in St. Charles.

About 30 running club members converged at the Aldi store in Geneva a few days before Thanksgiving to spend $1,400 of found money that Kamps doled out in $40 increments at the door.

At a time when families and friends gather around tables laden with good things, "we wanted to be sure everyone has a chance to have food," explained Kamps, of Dick Pond Athletics store in St. Charles, where the club is based.

How do you collect more than $1,000 on neighborhood runs?

"If there's enough people looking and you start to get an eye for it ... you can make quite a bit of money," Kamps said. "The more you run, you start to see a pattern of where stuff is."

Mall parking lots, for example, can be treasure troves, but club members have also found loot embedded in tar or ice.

Most often their haul is coins or dollar bills, but this year a runner struck gold with an abandoned $100. "He got excited thinking it was a $1," Kamps said, "then he saw another zero and was very excited, then saw another zero and was very, very excited."

Over seven years, word has spread and the club also receives donations from supporters across the country and contributions from school kids thanks to a member who's a teacher.

They've dived into dumpsters occasionally and also have an arrangement with a local car wash whose owner lets them scrutinize vacuum bags for loose change.

"The most fun part is running around Aldi's," Kamps said.

This year's haul was the largest yet

The search for cash is a way to counter some runners being so into fitness they "become very self-absorbed," he noted.

"It's important to realize we're all lucky to be this healthy and able to go out and do what we do. There's (many) people who can't because of physical problems or can't because they don't get enough to eat."