A driving need

Over the years, my wife and I have driven a variety of Meals on Wheels routes. Our current route, which we drive once each week, covers much of downtown Redwood City and takes us into a number of apartment buildings and single-family homes. Monday through Thursday drivers deliver a single meal to each client. On Fridays — the day we drive — we deliver not only the Friday meal but also, for those who’ve requested it, two extra meals that help get our clients through the weekend.

Our weekly delivery run begins at the kitchens in Menlo Park’s Little House. There the meals are prepared and packaged, with hot meals going into insulated carrying bags and other items — such as milk and fruit — going into ice chests. Until recently, while waiting for the meals to be packaged we’d have coffee and socialize with the other volunteers. No longer, however. Nowadays we barely get out of our car. Instead, we park in the Little House parking lot and wait for a phone call signaling that our food is ready to go. Then we drive to the front of Little House, where our food containers are waiting on a long folding table. Nearby another table has disposable gloves, hand sanitizer (from which we can fill the small bottle we keep in our car) and clean, empty paper bags that we can use for larger deliveries. We transfer the containers to our car, and then move the car to a parking space where we verify that what we’ve been given is correct.

Back in January, meal delivery involved either handing the food to the client at their door, or, as was often the case, entering their home and putting the food away at the client’s direction. This gave us a chance to do another important part of our job, which was to note any health or safety issues that could potentially endanger our client. It also allowed us to spend a bit of time with those clients who otherwise saw very few outsiders. As you can imagine, this heightened the risk of contracting the virus for both us and our clients. The need not only for physical distancing but also to minimize our touching of any potentially contaminated surfaces required changes to how we deliver.

At first our clients were asked to put a small table inside their entry where we could deposit the food without stepping further into their home. But that was still too risky. The procedure was adjusted further, and we were also required to watch an online video about safe food delivery in a time of COVID-19.

Upon arrival at the client’s home we now don masks, take the appropriate hot and cold items from the insulated containers (putting them into paper bags, if necessary) and place them at the client’s door. We ring the bell or knock, and then step back a safe distance. Once the client has taken their food, we return to our car, sanitize our hands and remove our masks. Then it’s off to the next house on our list.

This new procedure doesn’t allow us to perform a proper safety check and, regretfully, we no longer get to spend time with our clients. But it lets us safely perform our core mission, which is to ensure that each of our clients gets at least one healthy meal each day.

I’m proud to do more than simply give money to such a worthy organization. At this time Meals on Wheels has enough volunteers, but they are always open for donations (see penvol.org/mealsonwheels). Meals on Wheels may not need extra help at this moment, but I’m sure that other organizations do, so consider ways you might help.

Greg Wilson is the creator of Walking Redwood City, a blog inspired by his walks throughout Redwood City and adjacent communities. He can be reached at greg@walkingRedwoodCity.com. Follow Greg on Twitter @walkingRWC.