A bag full of groceries from Storehouse Community Food Pantry is as good as gold for Henry Thompson.

“I would probably go hungry if it were not for this place,” Thompson said before picking up his weekly supply of peanut butter and jelly from the organization’s South Street store, lined with aisles of such essentials as canned soup, pastas, bread and other food, perishable and not.

“Now, I can concentrate on getting work and not worry about having something to eat,” said Thompson, 57. “People do good things for you and you should do good things for other people. It always comes back around.”

It’s been 10 years of those kinds of stories for food pantry volunteers — and the need is only growing in the weak economy, said Betty Kamman, a director for the pantry.

“Oh, definitely it’s more people now,” she said. “So many people aren’t working right now.”

The all-volunteer organization gave food to 3,522 people in 2011, a little higher than the 3,000 or so who lined up at the pantry in years past, according to the pantry’s count. Through July of this year, 2,148 people had picked up food, the count shows. Unemployment rates in Mississippi’s 82 counties for July come out later this month; Warren’s was 10.9 percent in June, up eight-tenths of a percent from May.

The pantry is open from 10 a.m. until noon Mondays and Wednesdays and from 5 until 6 p.m. Thursdays. Kamman said about 13 people volunteer regularly, with help from several others. Families and individuals are asked to show a photo ID and a Social Security card to receive food from the pantry. Bags are filled by volunteers by family size, up to four or five people. A wooden donation box at Corner Market is still picked up, but it’s lighter than in the past, volunteer Charles Calhoun said.

The underemployed — typically part-time workers counted as employed in monthly jobless figures — also visit the pantry in droves, as well as the elderly, people not eligible for public assistance and those with high medical bills, volunteers said.

“What they’re doing here is magnificent,” said M.L. Lewis, a part-time security and casino industry worker, taking a basket of canned goods home for lunch. “It’s helping me support myself.”

Donations from the public and from local employers keep the shelves stocked, as do food drives from about a half-dozen churches and financial gifts so volunteers can buy directly from grocers. The pantry’s grocery bill has grown with the price of food and with an ever-changing list of private food drives, Kamman said.

“Our receipts from County Market are about $5,000,” she said. “We buy most of the (non-donated) groceries there, a lot of the toiletries and things we buy in bulk.”

Bread, sugar and any frozen items that come in are always in high demand, which go out fast, Calhoun said.

“The kinds of stuff that don’t stay good on the shelf for too long,” he said. “We usually have to buy those.”

The pantry began in 2002 and moved into its current digs after it outgrew locations inside the United Way of West Central Mississippi and at the Southern Cultural Heritage Center. United Way handles donations by phone to the pantry, Calhoun said.