Seniors in Elk Grove can’t leave their houses. These volunteers are bringing them food
Kevin Lillard was behind the wheel as his white van dipped into the parking lot of Renwick Square, a cluster of senior apartments near the western edge of Elk Grove. A team of six gathered for a quick check-in.
“Has anybody traveled outside the country in the last 14 days?”
“Have any of you felt sick or any kind of nausea, or any kind of sickness?”
No one left the circle, so they loaded up two carts with food boxes and disappeared into the halls of the complex.
The volunteers had risen early to shop, sort and pack the 40 boxes of food — eggs, bread, pasta and fruit now loaded onto a shuttle van and on its way to an older adult in need. This was the second week of a world turned upside down for thousands of seniors in Elk Grove.
Household staples have become prized commodities. Once a regular part of daily life, communal meetings and other friendly get-togethers have been canceled. Shopping is out of the question.
Public health experts say the elderly are most at risk of death from COVID-19, a grim fact that has left seniors isolated from their families in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. The disease has hit Elk Grove particularly hard. Six residents of an Elk Grove senior-living home have tested positive for coronavirus. One of the residents, a woman in her 90s, died from COVID-19.
The volunteers delivering food offer a lifeline to Elk Grove seniors.
Peggy Belcher, 79, was busying herself with daytime TV when the volunteers knocked at the door, alerting her that a package had arrived outside. She’s had heart trouble, wrestles with diabetes and a cancer diagnosis that is “not aggressive right now,” but her doctors are watching it.
The box comes in handy because it offers some things she may not have — even more so right now. In February, Belcher bought a car to get around but she hasn’t touched it since the coronavirus became a threat.
“I don’t come out and nobody comes in,” she said, standing near her front door.
‘We’re spending about 3,500 a week’
The Elk Grove Food Bank Services routes through this community at least once every month but Kevin Spease, a president of the Laguna Sunrise Rotary Club, suggested the residents could use a bit more help given the governor’s “stay-at-home” order. And he’s not wrong.
Nearly 1 out of every 14 people over the age of 60 in the Sacramento region does not have enough food to eat, the nonprofit Feeding America concluded. Even more, about 1 out of every 8 have slipped in and out of food insecurity at least once.
Spease started raising money and found volunteers to shop and deliver the food. How long will it last?
“We’re spending about 3,500 a week,” he said. “We have enough right now to go to the middle of April.”
The delivery effort started long before they arrived. A team of grocery shoppers scour stores on the weekend with a shopping list coordinated through text messages. The early planning is necessary to work around food shortages.
“Looking to develop a Supermarket Sweep Team Bravo for a shopping challenge,” Spease texted to eight volunteers last Friday. “Need the following from each member by Monday.”
The list was short, only nine items, including canned soup, ground meat and eggs. Smart & Final limited food quantities per household. Plenty of wheat bread, Tuna and eggs were found at Costco. Target was all “depleted.”
Walmart came through with 34 of everything. “Don’t hit them for more,” Spease advises.
The mission was accomplished just before midday Saturday.
‘We are so grateful’
Many older adults come to rely on senior centers and food delivery programs like Meals on Wheels. Spease’s effort is one of many trying to limit their exposure and chip away at hunger during the lockdown.
They’re just as vulnerable as children but harder to find, living isolated and lonely lives.
Mary Rodriguez, 73, talked through the frame of her kitchen window. They left two boxes by her doorstep, one for her and another for a neighbor. Group activities are off-limits and many have stopped coming outside, she said.
“We are so grateful,” Rodriguez said from behind a screen, “because we’re quarantined in here, you know.”
The deliveries kept going.
They found Donna Nagler, 75, taking in the sun from the balcony of her apartment.
“I’ve been ordering online but I do get out just to go for little walks and get some air. But I don’t get close to anybody,” Nagler said. “Thank God I have a little patio I can sit on. That’s my savior.”
She moved in a little more than a year ago to be closer to her son. She’s concerned about family back in New York who works jobs that did not give time off. “I have grandkids I’m worried about; I call them every day,” she said.