Coronavirus kindness: San Jose pizza company donates, delivers meals to elderly in quarantine

ByDustin Dorsey KGO logo

Wednesday, March 18, 2020

SJ pizza company donates, delivers meals to elderly in quarantine

Tony & Alba's Pizza & Pasta in San Jose is delivering free pizza's and salads to people over 70 in their delivery area as Santa Clara County is told to shelter-in-place.

SAN JOSE, Calif. (KGO) -- Everyone needs some people doing good right now with the Coronavirus pandemic running headlines.

It's exactly what the owners of Tony & Alba's Pizza & Pasta are doing to give back to their South Bay Community.

"I say, 'we're all in this together and together we're going to get out of this'," Tony & Alba's Pizza & Pasta Owner Al Vallorz said. "That's always in my head, 'we're all in this together and together we're going to get out of this'."

These words of positivity sparked Tony & Alba's Owners Al and Dianna Vallorz to give back to those in need with the gift of pizza.

This staff is hard at work to donate and deliver take and bake pizza and salads free of charge to elderly people over 70 in their area who are quarantined in their homes due to the recent shelter-in-place order by Santa Clara County.

The delivery area is within Lawrence Expressway, El Camino, Campbell Avenue and Meridian according to Tony & Alba's.

"My wife and I and our children grew up a mile away from here," Vallorz said. "These are our people. It's our community. It's who we grew up with. It's the people that have supported us for all these years here, we've been in business for 30 years. We give back all the time, we have different programs, but we just felt that this was a real big time and a real big need right now."

Since they started this promotion, Vallorz and his family have delivered 50 pizzas on their own time and received thousands of dollars in donations to help fund these orders.

And the reactions from these random acts of pizza make it all worth it.

"They cried when I gave it to them, some felt like crying and some thanked us," Vallorz said. "Some gave us money to pay it forward to the next person that we are going to deliver it to. It's cool. It's just cool."

Vallorz says that he isn't doing this for the publicity or reactions, but because it is the right thing to do.

He believes that if he can do good in his neighborhood, others can see it and the good deeds will grow.

A simple way to Build a Better Bay Area.

"Pizza makes you feel good," Vallorz said. "You get a pizza, you go home, you can watch a Netflix movie with the family. So I'm doing it here and maybe someone else will pick it up in a different part of the state or in a different state or area. I'm 62 years old and hopefully, God willing, this doesn't happen again. But if I need help, I hope that somebody that's 20 or 25 years old now look up and say, 'that guy did it for them, let's do it for him and that generation'."

We're all in this together and together we'll get through this.

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