Help us help Meals on Wheels

Roger Garretson and Pat Faley The food delivered daily by Westlake Village-based Meals on Wheel provides nourished bodies and enriched lives, but the volunteer organization needs funding and support to pursue its noble mission.

Meals on Wheels, which began 30 years ago, delivers two meals a day to homebound residents in Westlake Village, Agoura Hills and Oak Park. Food is delivered and friendships are made.

"We may be the only person that person sees the entire day," says volunteer driver board vice president Roger Garretson. "We give them some contact with the outside world."

Clients receive one hot and one cold meal each weekday between 11 a.m. and noon. The food is prepared at the Los Robles Hospital and Medical Center's East Campus in Westlake Village. The hot meal includes an entree such as steak, chicken or spaghetti and meatballs, and two vegetables. The cold meal is a sandwich, fruit, milk and juice.

Recipients, who can be any age, pay $3 a meal, although the fee has been waived in certain hardship cases. The program has 28 clients, mostly elderly. Some are ill and incapacitated or have difficulty moving. After one woman's husband passed away she didn't want to cook anymore and decided to become a Meals on Wheels client. The recepients have a choice of how many days they want to receive meals.

Everyone with Meals on Wheels is a volunteer, driving their own vehicles for deliveries and paying for their own gas. Only the program coordinator, Garretson's niece, Debbie Garretson, is paid. She interviews each new client for their dietary information, helps with meal preparation, and serves as the contact person when recipients have questions.

Westlake resident Pat Faley, the board president, became involved in Meals on Wheels eight years ago following her retirement.

"I'd heard about Meals on Wheels in several different places we had lived so I knew it was a good organization," Faley said.

"Meeting the clients and seeing them on a weekly basis you get to be friends with them, learn about them and their families. They're just really neat people," Faley said.

New clients are welcome, she said. "This year we lost several people to death; one couple moved to nursing home."

One of the biggest challenges facing the Meals on Wheels organizers is advertising their service to those who need it. So when The Acorn offered to help not only publicize the program, but to also provide funding through subscription fees, the volunteers were thrilled. (See form on page 4).

"I think what The Acorn is doing is wonderful," said Roger Garretson, a 77 retiree. "A lot of people, when the time comes and they need us, they don't remember that we are here."

Funding helps defray program costs, including payment for the receipients who can't afford the $6 a day for two meals. Meals on Wheels donations also come from the City of Westlake Village, the City of Agoura Hills and the Rotary Club of Westlake Village.

"We've never turned a person down because they couldn't buy meals," Garretson said.

For more information about Meals on Wheels, call (805) 3704295. To subscribe to The Acorn for $25 a year, of which 40 percent will be donated to the Westlake Meals on Wheels program, call (818) 706-0266.