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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

This Father Knows How To Redeem Coupon-Clipping Priest Creates Own Loaves-And-Fishes Story

Associated Press

Frugality has always appealed to Vincent Lopez, even before the priest took a vow of poverty four decades ago.

But his knack for turning stacks of supermarket coupons into heaps of food donations for needy families has amazed people who know him.

“I don’t know how he does it,” says Nicole Mombell, a student at Marist High School, where Lopez is the principal. “He’s a coupon genius or something.”

Every Sunday, Lopez buys between five and 50 newspapers, depending on how large the coupon inserts are. His mailbox at the school’s office fills with donations from his students’ newspapers and magazines.

“Everyone knows he’s the coupon master,” says Jack Wharfield, the business manager at Marist High.

Lopez, 67, also receives a small bundle in the mail each month, containing the leftovers from a coupon-clipping millionaire who lives in Austin, Texas.

“He understands what I’m doing,” Lopez says.

In all, Lopez spent $20,000 on food for the poor last year, and with coupons he parlayed that amount into $100,000 worth of products.

He doesn’t mess around with the smaller coupons worth 10 or 20 cents. He collects the ones for 50 cents and up, reads the fine print, then plans his attack.

He once took home $50 worth of groceries for $3. He has paid 9 cents for a toothbrush, 5 cents for a bar of soap, 16 cents for a package of Hamburger Helper. But his proudest feat is a near-continuous flow of free sandwich bags.

The manufacturer put a buy-one-get-one-free offer on the bottom of its boxes of Glad-Lock Zipper sandwich bags. Lopez bought 100 boxes, clipped the coupons and got 100 boxes for free.

He then clipped the coupons on the free boxes, mailed them in and got another 100 freebies, and so on, for the past six months. And he’s not going to stop until the company discontinues the offer.

“I really would like to make the Guinness Book of World Records for this,” he says.

Lopez stockpiles the food and sundries in the chapel at his residence on the Marist High campus. Boxes and bags of food are stacked as high as the priest’s eyebrows, threatening to overtake the Pope’s portrait on the wall.

When the chapel gets too full for evening Mass, students help load the goods into a van to be hauled away to one of three local relief centers.

Lopez says he wants his students to learn from his hobby that they should have a generous spirit, and the resourcefulness to go with it.

“Somewhere down the line one of my graduates will be a billionaire, and he or she will know what to do.”