By Pat Sherman
SDUN Assistant Editor
As a service center manager for Meals on Wheels Greater San Diego, Michelson encourages volunteers to bring their children when they deliver meals to home-bound seniors.
“I’ve taken my grandchildren with me to do a route,” Michelson said. “The seniors’ faces just light up to see a little one handing them their meal.
“We’re really trying to do more of that,” she said.
Michelson hopes to foster this spirit of intergenerational giving and connection during Meals on Wheels’ upcoming community street fair, June 26 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in Bankers Hill.
The event, titled “Generations Together,” is being held in conjunction with St. Paul’s Senior Homes and Services.
Both organizations are celebrating 50 years of serving seniors in San Diego County.
The event, sponsored by the San Diego SeaLions soccer team and San Diego Trust Bank, will include a “Bark for Seniors” canine costume contest, free pet adoptions, food, children’s activities, jump houses, Cajun music, folkloric dancing, arts and crafts and more.
During the fair Meals on Wheels staff will be recruiting volunteers. The organization currently has around 350 people who deliver lunch and dinner seven days a week to more than 900 homebound seniors and other incapacitated individuals throughout the county.
“It would not happen at all without those volunteers,” Michelson said. “They use their own car and their own gas. They’re just the biggest hearted people and they really love what they’re doing.”
The organization has close to 100 clients in the Uptown area, Michelson said, including Golden Hill, South Park, Mission Hills, North Park and Hillcrest. The service costs $7 a day, less than half of what it costs to prepare and deliver the meals, she said. A reduced fee is available for those who cannot afford to pay.
The average age of clients is about 80, Michelson said. Many suffer from vision and hearing loss, dementia or Alzheimer’s. Some are stroke victims, diabetics or have heart conditions or other chronic illnesses.
Many clients no longer drive. Having their meals delivered allows them to remain independent and stay in their homes.
“Usually they’re widows, but we do have men and couples too,” Michelson said. “Some don’t have family to help. For many of them it’s too difficult just to make a meal and clean up the mess.
“I visited a client up in Mission Hills who has lived in the same house 60 years and that is their whole world,” she said. “If a meal’s coming, it helps them to stay there.”
While delivering meals, volunteers also make sure clients are safe and secure.
“It’s not only a nutrition program, it’s also that social contact and a really good wellbeing check,” Michelson said. “We save a lot of people who’ve fallen and the reason they’re saved is because they didn’t answer the door for the meals.”
Michelson said she wants to do more to promote the intergenerational aspect of volunteering. With Baby Boomers hitting retirement age, there will continue to be more people in need of services.
She also hopes to improve children’s and teens’ perception of older adults.
“I went to an elementary school and I asked the children to draw a picture and a description [of an elderly person],” she said. “Most comments were negative, which was really kind of sad. If you don’t have grandparents and you’re not around [older adults] you may have an image that isn’t all that positive.
“But that’s what comes with age,” Michelson said. “You do get sick. You do bend over. You do have white hair and wrinkles. As you age, nobody is going to be spared.”
‘Generations Together’ street fair
WHEN 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. June 26
WHERE 3rd Avenue between Maple and Nutmeg streets in Bankers Hill
INFO 278-4041 or
meals-on-wheels.org
