On Friday Nov. 20 ASB and Pep Band travelled to a Pleasanton Safeway to promote the Alameda county canned food drive, which will be taking place later this spring, on NBC Bay Area News.

ASB and Pep Band were given the opportunity to make an appearance on the news because of the outstanding amount of canned food brought in each year by students and faculty. In 2014 PHS provided around 6,000 pounds of food and in addition, donated $4,000 to the drive.

“Its an honor to be asked by the Alameda County food bank to represent the county,”ASB teacher Mercedes Foster said. “Going on the news is a kick off of their [Alameda county’s] holiday food drive, which is in partnership with safeway.”

Each year the ASB and Pep Band students have to be to school by 4 a.m. in order to make it to Pleasanton on time.

“We met up with the news crew at 5 in Pleasanton,” said senior Pep Band member Andrew Newcomb. “They set us up for different shots, for instance, they had some students come out of the aisles as they panned the camera. It was really fun, having the the experience of being on T.V.”

From 5 a.m to 7 a.m., the students appeared  on NBC Bay Area several times in order to do promotional teasers. Once the segment started, ASB students were interviewed about the food drive as well as performing skits and Pep Band performed. ASB teacher Mercedes Foster and band teacher Andrea Mullen supervised the trip.

“I like getting on the bus and seeing all of these teenagers who 100 percent of them want to be asleep, but all of them showed up,” Foster said. “ You’re getting this opportunity to celebrate and bring attention to something, and at four in the morning there were 50 kids excited and ready to go.”

This event has been going on four out of the past five years, which has given the seniors in ASB and Pep Band multiple opportunities to appear on the morning news.

Pep band and ASB go together to because ASB is the group who runs the food drive at Piedmont and band performs on the news, making it more of a festive event.

“Going on the news raises awareness, not only for Piedmont students, but also for other students who are watching the news,” freshman ASB member Shannon Landheer said. “However, we are donating later in the year since many schools are participating in the holiday food drive and people need food year round. The food drive will be happening later this spring at PHS.”