Erik Talkin

SURVIVING ON THE EDGE: To get a sense of what life is like for people who survive on the help that his organization provides, Erik Talkin, CEO of the Foodbank of Santa Barbara County, started living on food stamps and other forms of social services for a month. It hasn’t been easy, as we’ve learned via his weekly reports at independent.com, which include waking up in the middle of the night with hunger pangs on day three, only to rely on the corn flakes that he’d gotten from the Foodbank that day. “If I had still been an 8-year-old in front of Saturday-morning cartoons, this would have been great,” writes Talkin. “Only I was a hungry adult with no TV. This was probably the low point of week one.” See independent.com/foodbank.