Meals On Wheels delivers food, friendship

WASILLA — Shelly Johnson got more than she bargained for when she started volunteering in the kitchen at the Wasilla Senior Center.

“I wasn’t working and needed something to do,” she said.

Her volunteer work turned into a paid position delivering Meals On Wheels for seniors living in the Wasilla area.

Johnson took the Frontiersman on her route Friday while she delivered 44 meals along a meandering route. Between 80 and 100 meals are delivered Monday through Friday through the Wasilla Senior Center Meals On Wheels program, she said.

“I just can’t imagine changing jobs. It’s me socializing. I’m not really working. I’m out having fun,” Johnson said. “I don’t look at it like it’s a job.”

But the 30-something doesn’t just know who likes salad and who prefers soup. Johnson also knows the first and last names of each person on her route, their birthdays and, in most cases, their life stories. And she knows which seniors on her route to call in advance so they have time to put on pants before she knocks at the door.

Some of her peers tease her that all of her friends are seniors, Johnson said. Though it is a slight exaggeration, there is truth here, too. She has friends all along her Meals On Wheels route.

“They know my life story. I know theirs,” Johnson said.

‘A total lifesaver’

At Wanda Curry’s house, Johnson unpacks her meal, picks up the newspaper from the front yard and heads to the door.

Curry said she has used the Meals On Wheels service for the past three years.

“I like their soups and the driver has a sunny disposition,” she said.

They two chat momentarily and Johnson heads back out the door.

“Thanks Wanda. Have a good weekend. I’ll see you Monday,” she says.

More than just the food she’s paid to deliver, Johnson said her friends on the route need human contact — just like everybody else.

“They need people to talk to. Sometimes I’m the only person they talk to for weeks or months.”

On her days off, she sometimes drops in to share a cup of coffee and some conversation. Some weekends, Johnson stops in at AMVETS Post 11, where a clutch of her senior friends share drinks and talk of old times.

When one senior friend needed a vehicle repaired, Johnson leaned on her network of younger friends to help with the repairs. Another time, she got a friend to help a senior modify the kitchen slightly to make room for a wheelchair between a cabinet and the refrigerator.

Heading up the hill to Dean Backen’s house, Johnson pulls out her cellphone and dials.

“Hi. It’s Shelly. I’m on my way.”

Braken says the call is so Johnson doesn’t have to wait so long for him to answer the door. But he admits he likes to lounge about in his T-shirt and underwear, and the call also gives him time to put on pants before Johnson arrives.

He’s used the program for about a year and he says the food averages out to about a 4 on a scale of 1 to 10. But Johnson is a 9.5, he said.

“If it wasn’t for her, life would be pretty difficult,” Braken said. “She’s a total lifesaver.”

More liver and

onions, please

Several seniors on Johnson’s route were critical of the flavor of the food and the amount of food they receive for their $5 suggested donation.

Theresa Fuller, who has used the program for more than a year, is among this group.

“I’m a fan of the program,” she said. “But I’m not a fan of some of the cooking.”

Wednesday’s meal of turkey, potatoes and vegetables wasn’t so bad, Fuller said.

“The turkey almost had some taste to it,” she said.

But she said she understands some people who get the meals need to have food that is blander than she prefers.

Fuller said the drivers are the best part of the Meals On Wheels service. “They care about you as a person.”

If it isn’t Johnson who shows up with her Meals On Wheels delivery, she said she worries.

“What’s Shelly doing? Is she OK?”

At Kathryn Willey’s house she says she has some suggestions for program managers.

“I like liver and onions.”

She said she likes to see that and corned beef and cabbage on the menu regularly.

“The meals are really good most of the time,” Willey said. “But sometimes they are awful.”

Willey has a hard tome getting around without a motorized scooter. So when one was donated to the senior center, Johnson told her about it.

“She got to go to the fair last year,” Johnson said. “She was so excited.”

The hardest part of Johnson’s job is when her senior friends have unmet needs she can’t meet, like the couple who needs a better insulated front door to reduce their heating bills. Johnson is still trying to find a way to help them.

Need is up, but

funding is down

Between the meals he serves at the Wasilla Senior Center and the food for the Meals On Wheels program, Executive Chef Clay Randolph feeds about 1,000 people a week and 52,000 a year.

Some seniors who receive food through the Meals On Wheels program pay for the meals through Medicaid Choice, Randolph said. Others can’t afford to pay at all, he said.

Last year, one paying client could supplement meals for three non-paying clients. But costs for food and transportation have increased to the point where that ratio is now 2-to-1, Randolph said.

Through Medicaid Choice funding, the Meals On Wheels program is allowed to provide meals to other seniors within a 10-mile radius of a Medicaid Choice client, Randolph said.

“I see the need rising, but I don’t see funding changing,” he said. Demand for nutrition services has increased 60 percent since he started, Randolph said.

A recent survey by the Wasilla Senior Center of Meals On Wheels users found that some clients don’t pay for meals because doing so would mean they couldn’t fill needed prescriptions or pay their mortgage, Randolph said.

He said the meals and the welfare check drivers’ provide is crucial to helping people remain in their homes living independently as long as possible.

In 2010, the program received a one-time grant through the controversial American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to feed hungry people extra food, Randolph said. He said the funds were used to add a breakfast program that delivered a week’s worth of breakfast food to seniors each Tuesday. The meals include nutritious foods like milk, eggs, oatmeal, yogurt and fruit.

“That’s been a huge, huge thing that we started last February,” Randolph said.

Every Meals On Wheels client received the breakfasts until the grant funding ran out, he said. Now it’s just 24 Medicaid Choice clients who get breakfasts.

‘She’s the highlight

of my day’

Carl and Ruth Tinsley have been married for 65 years. On Friday, she volunteered in the kitchen while he worked in the gym.

Ruth Tinsley, 79, is one of the seniors who regularly volunteers in the kitchen. And husband Carl serves on the board of directors for the senior center.

“She treats it just like a job,” chef Randolph said. He said she works five hours a day and tells him a month in advance if she plans to be absent.

Ruth Tinsley said she has always been active and working in the kitchen is a way to give back to the senior population.

“I cut vegetables, I do dishes — whatever needs to be done,” she said. “I just like working.”

Before heading out on the road, Johnson also helps prepare and package the meals. By about 10:15 a.m., the meals are packaged and loaded into red heated bags for delivery.

One of those meals is for Ellen Setters, who has used the Meals On Wheels service for about a year. She said the service and food are wonderful.

“She’s the highlight of my day,” Setters said, linking hands with Johnson.

She said if Johnson is late, she worries.

The two friends told the story of one day when Johnson knocked and got no answer. She entered anyway and tucked the meal in Setters’ refrigerator. But Setters didn’t know Johnson had stopped by while she was out in her garage.

“I worried a lot about her until I realized my lunch was in the refrigerator,” she said.

Setters lives with her son, but she said she still relies on the meals and friendship Johnson provides.

“I care a lot about Shelly,” she said. “We know when each others big days are coming up.”

They say they have plans to hit a few garage sales together this summer, too.

‘I’m just happy’

Meals On Wheels Association of America is a nationwide network of 5,000 associated senior nutrition programs that provide more than a million meals a day to seniors. There are several Meals On Wheels programs operating in the Mat-Su Borough. Mid-Valley Seniors Inc., Palmer Senior Citizens Center Inc., Upper Susitna Seniors Inc. and Wasilla Area Seniors Inc. all offer the service for seniors.

Doris Tallman, 89, lives near Lake Lucille, but has received used the Meals On Wheels program offered through the Palmer Senior Center for the last two years.

She’s one of a group of fortunate seniors who is surrounded by family: her daughter lives next door and her granddaughter lives upstairs.

“Those Meals On Wheels are a lifesaver,” said her daughter, Shelia Dow. “It’s her primary meal. And most of the time their food is very good.”

Dow said when the family signed up for the service she was working during the day and wasn’t home to prepare lunch for her mother.

“It worked so good, we just kept doing it,” she said.

Where able-bodied people who need can drive to the food bank and stand in line, seniors like her mother can’t, Dow said. But programs like Meals On Wheels help fill that gap for seniors, she said.

Tallman said she also looks forward to having her meal delivered and spending a few moments talking to the driver.

For drivers, perhaps the toughest part of the job is dealing with the death of the seniors they’ve grown to love.

Johnson said she’s already lost a few close friends.

Still, she says the job and the senior friends she’s made have changed her for the better.

“It’s nice. Everything has changed,” she said. “I’m not so wound up. I’m just happy.”

Contact Heather A. Resz at 352-2268 or heather.resz@frontiersman.com.