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Guard troops get $100 shopping sprees

A total of 9,500 National Guardsmen recently got mini-shopping sprees at their local commissaries, courtesy of the industries that stock the military stores.

The problem is, for many Guardsmen, their closest commissary is anything but local.

In December, the American Logistics Association presented $95,000 in donations to the National Guard Bureau to be distributed in $100 “Certifichecks” to Guardsmen across the country. The donations came in from commissary suppliers like Johnson & Johnson, Hanes and Nestle.

The certificates were then distributed to state Guard bureaus, who gave them out on a first-come, first-served basis, according to Manny Pacheco, a spokesman for the NGB.

The question now is how some Guardsmen will manage to use those funds. Many live hundreds of miles from the nearest commissary, so a trip to the store can offset the benefits of reduced prices.

Ever since members of the National Guard and reserves got access to commissaries in 2004, the Defense Commissary Agency has been trying to find ways to help those service members use their benefit. One method put into practice is holding truckload sales, where DeCA will truck in boxes of its most popular items and put them on sale at installations far away from commissaries.

“It’s our way of recognizing that yes, some of these folks are far from an installation, and it’s our way we can bring a little bit of the benefit to them, recognizing it’s not a complete store,” said Tim Ford, a DeCA spokesman. DeCA held 21 such sales across 11 states in fiscal 2007, taking in more than $1.6 million. So far there have been five offsite sales in fiscal 2008, and Ford said it was likely that there would be about 21 total for the year.

To maximize the impact of the truck sales, DeCA is working on a way to have installations communicate which items are most needed so that the trucks can provide the right items, Ford said.

“Would timing [a sale] after a deployment work better or not? We don’t know,” Ford said. “This is sort of a time of looking at ways to increase effectiveness.”