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Health

For some, Meals on Wheels is a real 'life giver'

By Lewis Kamb, The Seattle Times on

Published in Senior Living Features

They've survived a house fire, hung on through homelessness, raised five children on little more than food stamps and faith, and endured the hardships of declining health amid poverty's tightening grip.

Yet 29 years later, David and Kaye Shattuck still awaken side by side, rising in a modest second-floor apartment in the shadow of a roadside casino to face the gamble that each new day brings, together as husband and wife.

But over the past eight months, worsening symptoms of David's chronic diabetes have threatened to pull the couple apart forever. With increasing regularity, he has fallen to the apartment's floor functionally dead, kept alive only by his wife's pounding fists upon his chest until emergency crews arrive to revive him.

"I've died like six times," David Shattuck said, "just (from) insulin reactions and diabetic reactions. I die, and then they bring me back."

Since April, David's troubles with spiking blood-sugar levels also have landed him in three diabetic comas and hospitalized him seven times. During one recent stay at Harborview Medical Center, doctors informed the Shattucks about a new complication with David's health.

"They just told me, 'He needs to eat,'" Kaye Shattuck said. "'He's starving to death.'"

Not long afterward, the couple found what David calls "a miracle from God."

"The Meals on Wheels program," the 61-year-old retired groundskeeper said. "It saved my life."

The charitable program David Shattuck calls "a life giver" feeds hundreds of people like the Shattucks every week in King County. Last year, 2,166 residents -- mostly low-income seniors -- dined on 389,890 meals made available through the program.

Meals on Wheels is just one of about a dozen programs that Senior Services, a Seattle-based nonprofit, provides to needy seniors. Agency officials emphasize that it's also one of the nonprofit's most important because it assists low-income and disabled seniors in maintaining their independence and quality of life.

Senior Services is among the 12 agencies that benefit from The Seattle Times' Fund for the Needy, which has raised more than $16.5 million for agencies that help children, families and senior citizens since its inception 36 years ago.

"If people didn't have Meals on Wheels, their independence might be compromised," said Paula Houston, Senior Services' chief executive. "They'd have to go live with somebody else or in a retirement community or at a nursing home. So this way, they're still getting the nutrition they need and they're able to stay in their home."

Each week, Senior Services distributes thousands of prepackaged frozen meals to seven senior centers throughout King County, where local staff and volunteers in turn deliver the meals to eligible clients in their service areas. The program, which also offers delivery of grocery items and pet food, caters primarily to homebound seniors, many of whom have special dietary needs.

Matt Davis, who runs Meals on Wheels for Auburn's Senior Activities Center, noted volunteers who deliver the meals experience first hand how the program improves lives.

"What it really does," Davis said, "is extend the life of some people who don't have the means to really shop or cook or get out."

Just ask the Shattucks.

"A magical lady"

The first time David Shattuck laid eyes on his future bride at a church potluck, he saw "a magical lady."

But the object of his affection -- a single mother raising five children on welfare -- took a cautious approach to her would-be suitor. In fact, it was Kaye's children -- aged two to 11 -- who first took a shine to the 32-year-old sporting a pinstripe suit and a Fu Manchu mustache.

"My children, they liked him," Kaye recalled. "They said, 'Mom, he's OK.' "

Before long, the couple was married and David adopted Kaye's children as his own. But his $4.50 per hour job in a machine shop brought in less than what Kaye received in public assistance. Once she married David, the welfare checks stopped.

"Life was hard," David said.

To get by, David worked up to 16 hours a day, seven days a week. He eventually found steady work as a retirement home maintenance man, but it meant putting in long hours away from his family.

"I could never be with them," David said. "That broke my heart."

Three decades later, with their children grown and struggling to get by with their own families, the couple now lives alone with their cat in a modest apartment near the Muckleshoot Casino. A work accident two years ago hastened David's retirement, and his diabetes has since weakened him. With Kaye forced to stay home to provide round-the-clock care, David's $1,300 per-month Social Security check is the Shattucks' lone income.

The money goes quickly, spent mostly on rent and utilities. Until a few months ago, the couple subsisted on what they could buy with $125 in monthly food stamps, supplemented by trips to local food banks.

But food banks "pile on the pastries and things that we cannot accept because of David's diabetes," Kaye said. "There's nothing substantial."

 

After doctors warned the Shattucks that David was grossly malnourished, Kaye searched for answers. She recalled learning about Meals on Wheels while volunteering at the Auburn senior center. She put in a call, then an application.

A short time later, weekly deliveries arrived at the Shattucks' door. The first time food came, David cried.

"I still can't believe it," he said. "They're giving me ... good food."

Since starting Meals on Wheels a few months ago, David's health has improved.

"The doctor made a comment," Kaye recalled. "He said, 'David, you're looking like a teenager again. The fullness is back in your face.'"

Taking to the road

On a recent Friday outside the Auburn Senior Activities Center, Davis and volunteer Ron Green loaded a van with packed grocery bags marked with names of seven clients.

Soon after, they were navigating Auburn's roadways on the final leg of four weekly Meals on Wheels delivery routes. In all, Auburn's center provides more than 700 meals weekly to some 60 clients under the program.

Clients pre-order their deliveries from a menu that includes more than two dozen dinner options and four kinds of breakfasts. A typical meal includes an entree -- roast turkey, meat loaf or chicken marinara, for instance -- with two or three side dishes.

"They're just like frozen TV dinners basically," Davis said. "But they're healthy. They meet all nutritional requirements."

Meals can also be specially prepared for certain religious, cultural and health needs.

Since 2009, Senior Services has purchased the meals for its program through Washington State Correctional Industries, a state run business using prison labor to process food at facilities in Eastern Washington.

It's a vendor relationship the nonprofit actively reassesses, officials said, but currently, state prison labor provides the best option to meet Senior Services' large-scale needs. Last year, the nonprofit paid Correctional Industries $738,705 for nearly 400,000 meals.

"It's just really cost-effective," Houston said. "We've tried some other things, but at this point, there really isn't another source that we've been able to find that can do the volume of meals with the quality of meals that they have done."

Operating on a $16.5 million budget last year, Senior Services -- a nonprofit dating to the 1960s that employs 250 and boasts more than 3,300 volunteers -- relied mostly on government funding to cover costs for providing services to low income and disabled seniors.

Last year, the agency provided more than 70,000 King County residents with transportation, adult day health centers, minor home repairs, legal rights advice, free meals and other help.

With more than half of its funding coming from federal dollars passed through the city of Seattle, the nonprofit's spending is largely restricted, Houston noted. That means Senior Services relies on charitable donations for "discretionary funding" to meet unforeseen needs, such as providing thousands of meals that the agency serves annually beyond what government grants cover.

"That's where Fund for the Needy really helps," Houston said. "The last thing we would ever want to do is to cut back on any of our food programs and put people on a waitlist for Meals on Wheels."

The Shattucks, for one, say they're grateful that when they needed Meals on Wheels, it was there.

When Davis and Green, the volunteer, climbed the stairs to the couple's apartment carrying bags of food this month, Kaye Shattuck welcomed them at the door.

"It really helps," she said. "We were down to our last meal."

Lewis Kamb: 206-464-2932; lkamb@seattletimes.com. On Twitter @lewiskamb.

(c)2014 The Seattle Times

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