Meals on Wheels pinched at the pump

Surging gas prices force volunteers to cut back their driving time.

By ANDREW MEACHAM

© St. Petersburg Times, published March 19, 2000

ST. PETERSBURG -- Meals on Wheels volunteer Melvin Andrews reduced his deliveries last week from two days a week to one. He needed only two words to explain his decision: "Gas prices."

[Times photo: Cherie Diez] Arnie Kohl delivers a meal Friday in St. Petersburg to Joseph Herrera, 92, who has been on Kohl's route since he and his wife began volunteering for Meals on Wheels two years ago.

Andrews and wife Mary, both 80, have been taking noon meals to shut-ins for two years. But surging prices at the pump have forced the couple to cut their deliveries in half.

"I filled my tank the day before yesterday, and it cost me $19," Andrews said. "Six months ago, I could fill it for $12."

Last Monday, Meals on Wheels had to phone 15 people in Largo and tell them their lunches would not be coming. The charity was out of drivers.

"We hate making those phone calls," said Fred Rowe, volunteer coordinator for Meals on Wheels. "But we can't leave them sitting there waiting for their food." Holidays and graduation days in May have always pinched agency resources. The flu season last January also hit hard.

"But this is worse than flu season by far," Rowe said.

Charities throughout the bay area are feeling the same pinch in their volunteer forces as gas prices climb. Many volunteers are retirees on fixed incomes themselves and haven't been able to make their budgets stretch to meet skyrocketing fuel costs.

200 drivers a day

But as gas prices continue to rise, more drivers are cutting back their hours or quitting, saying they can no longer afford to drive their routes

"We were very worried about it, and now it's starting to come true," said Frank Kneen, the nutrition service director for Meals on Wheels. The non-profit agency uses 200 drivers a day, five days a week, to deliver a noon meal to people unable to leave their homes. "A lot of people, if they volunteered four times a week, now they volunteer three. If they did two (trips) a day, now they're only doing one."

If volunteers continue to drop out at this rate, Kneen said, "It will eventually cause us a hardship delivering meals."

Hillsborough County, which hires older workers to deliver Meals on Wheels and pays a 29-cent-a-mile reimbursement, isn't having a problem yet, said Aging Service section leader Gil Machin. But trouble may be on the horizon.

"I am starting to hear claims that if it goes up any higher, (workers) are going to have to quit," Machin said, "even though we pay them."

Volunteers defect

Gas prices in Florida have risen 3 cents in the last week, from $1.54 for a gallon of regular unleaded to $1.57, according to a report by the American Automobile Association. Regular self-serve gas has gone up nearly 60 cents in the last year, the largest one-year increase ever. Pat Hofstadter, volunteer recruitment coordinator for Neighborly Senior Services, has noticed more volunteer defections over the past two weeks. "We have had drivers call in last week, and this week and say they could no longer drive because gas prices are making it prohibitive," Hofstadter said. Neighborly Senior Services administers Meals on Wheels and serves lunches at several locations. It also arranges home health care visits by aides who must drive their own cars.

Most agencies do not offer reimbursement for mileage, and even those that do can have a hard time offsetting gas prices at the pump. Some Medicaid contracts call for reimbursement of about 30 cents a mile for staff, said Brian Feehan, who administers HIV and AIDS programs for Catholic Charities. Although Catholic Charities does not have volunteers who drive, rising gas prices are affecting how well they will be able to do their own work.

Among the services affected now are transportation to and from doctors' appointments and AIDS support groups.

Tampa Bay Harvest, which delivers food from 300 donors to 170 agencies in Hillsborough and Pinellas counties for the homeless and working poor, is also taking a hit. In the past two weeks, said director Dan McNally, more volunteers have called in to request shorter routes or to drop out.

"I'm beginning to have some concerns about it," McNally said. McNally said they are being hurt by having to cut back or quit. "They really do want to give, that's the main reason they're doing it. They love what they're doing and would only give it up as a last resort."

Meals on Wheels is actively seeking new volunteers. "Even a person who wanted to volunteer one day a week is helping us out a great deal," said nutrition director Kneen. The agency is also looking for gas stations willing to offer discounts to volunteers or merchants willing to donate gift certificates as enticements.

Volunteers run the spectrum in age and economic standing. But the core of many services to the elderly are fixed-income retirees. Often they are the only ones available during working hours to take patients to doctors' appointments, a benefit offered by the Road to Recovery program, which serves Pinellas County.

"We always have a shortage of volunteers," said Kenann Kennedy, area executive director for the American Cancer Society, which oversees the program. Kennedy has heard from some of the drivers now taking up to 10 patients a day to doctors' appointments. "They have expressed concern but haven't stopped driving," she said. "The mission is important enough that they're willing to sacrifice."

More than meals delivered

Pulling out of United Methodist, Arnie and Mary Lou Kohl, both 68, carry a dozen lunches in the trunk of a 1996 Mercury Grand Marquis. Arnie, a retired account executive, says the car gets about 23 miles to the gallon. A tank of gas costs him $28. It seems like only yesterday it cost $18. The car cruises noiselessly around a shady residential area south of 54th Avenue N near Haines Road.

With each stop, they open the trunk, collect the cold items from a refrigerated cooler and deliver the packages. Residents greet them warmly. During this day's trips, they made a 911 call on behalf of Edna Danicourt, 91, who had fallen. Danicourt had told the Kohls she was a former Meals on Wheels volunteer herself.

"You don't know what's in store for you," Arnie Kohl said after leaving Danicourt with fire and rescue personnel. "There's a woman who delivered the meals years ago and now she's relying on them."They sit there and they're waiting for you to come with that meal, and you think to yourself, "God almighty, this is the only meal they're getting today!' "

That's the way it was for the Rev. Diana Cowen's mother, and that's why Cowen is at Wesley Memorial on her first day of orientation as a volunteer.

"I know that when she didn't get her meals, she didn't eat," says Cowen, a minister at the Realm of Light Church in Tampa. Cowen saw a television news spot on the recent volunteer shortage and signed up. She says she is prepared to deliver Meals on Wheels five days a week while the shortage continues. Agency directors countywide say they are hoping more people will be willing to do the same.

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