On the surface, there’s nothing extraordinary about knocking on a door until you meet a Meals on Wheels volunteer. Then, you see a knock for what it is: a conduit to building a deep connection with a stranger that endures far beyond a nutritious meal.
On the other side of the door, these connections that unfold slowly and the care volunteers give homebound seniors through selfless acts, often in their greatest moment of need, are the heart of the Power of a Knock™ National Volunteer Award.
While Debbie - a Meals on Wheels volunteer from Ohio - took home the inaugural award, Barb, John and Cathi have incredible stories that were also honored this year for embodying this same spirit.
Cathi + Charles
Cathi has volunteered for over 15 years at her local Meals on Wheels program in Fort Myers, FL, Community Cooperative, Inc., a leader in the fight to end hunger and homelessness in Southwest Florida, and a place where compassion is abundant.
“I love the people,” Cathi says, who runs two delivery routes on Mondays and Fridays and fills in on other days whenever needed. “It's a massive undertaking to coordinate all these volunteers. They are so giving and truly have a heart for the world.”
Meals on Wheels collects people like Cathi, whose generosity never runs out, even in perilous conditions.
Like, say, a grim weather forecast in a state where memories are measured in hurricane names.
In September 2022, Ian, a powerful Category 4 hurricane and one of the deadliest and most destructive storms to ever hit Florida, swept through the Atlantic, dumping rain on Havana, Cuba — and was bearing down on the sunshine state and fixed ominously on Fort Myers.
As volunteers raced to reach seniors as they battened down doors and windows ahead of Ian’s thrashing 150-mph winds, Cathi hit the road, unsure she could reach her clients, including Charles.
Charles, whom she lovingly calls Mr. Charles, and his late wife, Miss Alice, met Cathi two years prior during a scheduled delivery. Over time, that first knock on the door developed into a close relationship.
“My job is not to just give them a hot meal,” Cathi says of Charles, Alice and other seniors, who become like family. “My job is to check on them and make sure they're healthy. If they're lonely, [think about] ‘what can we do to fix that.’”
That day Charles, nearly in tears, explained his wife, who’d battled illness for years, had become very sick and was admitted to the hospital. He was waiting for someone who agreed to take him to be by her side. With the storm fast approaching, Cathi insisted he go quickly, but not before she helped him lower his aluminum shutters to protect their home from Ian’s fury.
Sadly, Alice, as Cathi later learned, passed during the storm, and she and Charles were separated when he was evacuated to a shelter before returning home.
Following a citywide lockdown, Cathi resumed her regular delivery routes with her mother, navigating scattered debris in Ian’s wake and making a stop at Charles and Alice’s home, where she found him inside a damaged home without any power with waning cell phone battery life and in a panic; Charles didn’t know where they’d taken Alice’s body.
Charles and Alice didn’t have children or any nearby family members or neighbors — who all went north during the summer. She was all the family he had.
Cathi, a self-described “bulldog,” knew she needed to act quickly. She continued her deliveries, flagging down a Red Cross Disaster Relief Truck to tend to Charles along the way.
She also contacted a social worker with her local program, who eventually discovered his wife’s body was relocated to a funeral home 30 miles away. The two were reunited a week later, and Charles could finally lay his sweetheart of more than 60 years to rest.
As Cathi describes it, “That’s just one story, but there are hundreds of them,” which speaks to the unsung heroism of Meals on Wheels volunteers.
“[The power of a knock] means somebody being willing to knock on a door and meet whoever's on the other side of that door as an equal friend or family member that you just haven't met yet, and then, becoming a part of their life, even if it's just for four minutes or one meal.”
Cathi has remained dedicated to delivering meals through the happiest and hardest times, most recently enduring the loss of her mother this May, a regular co-pilot who was by her side last September.
In the months since, Cathi’s leaned on the kindness of others, like clients who offer a hug in moments her mother’s absence feels heaviest. This kindness gives her strength when tempests are raging in her own life.
Her message: What you give, you get back a million-fold if you’re willing to take the first step and make that first knock.
“It doesn't matter where we live or what we look like,” Cathi insists. “We are all connected. You may not be able to do a lot, but if you could give three hours out of one day to go help see somebody and take them a hot meal, the rewards for you are way beyond anything you'll ever expect.”
Barb + John
In 2017, Barb and John both decided to retire. The following year, they began volunteering with Bloomington Meals on Wheels in Bloomington, Indiana, and now do a route once a month, delivering meals to 12 clients as a team, the same way they’ve done everything for 28 years.
“I'm usually the one that gets out in the rain and snow, slush and sweltering heat and fight the dogs to get to the door,” Barb says jokingly.
Barb, a former healthcare worker, was familiar with Meals on Wheels through the home care she often provided clients.
“I thought I might be the only person they saw every day, then I realized, [through] Meals on Wheels, someone comes every single day during the week,” Barb says.
Volunteering was the perfect opportunity for them to work together to make a difference in their community.
“I love helping people,” Barb shares.
And the joy of connecting with people who often feel isolated keeps them returning.
“Some folks we serve have no other connection during the day,” Barb shares. And, to see a familiar face — they smile and ask about our lives. Having that exchange is an important part of having relationships with people, even if it's for a few minutes every month.”
And like many volunteers, familiarity often grows into familial, and with that sentiment, a deeper responsibility to ensure homebound seniors are safe and happy and their needs are met.
“We feel like part of their family because they may have family, but they're not close, or they feel their family has abandoned them, so they don't have anybody coming in,” John says of many seniors' harsh reality.
Barb sees food as a connection to people, whether it’s the memories made with loved ones around a dinner table that come flooding back when you smell or taste something familiar or the feeling of providing someone a meal tailored to their dietary or nutritional needs that keeps them strong and healthy.
Food brought them to Siliva, with whom they’ve cultivated a deep kinship.
“She's a family member now,” Barb says. "We talk multiple times a week, she loves for us to visit and sit down on her porch. It started out in a very simple way — working together, talking together and being with her through the good, the bad and the ugly."
The couple lets Sylvia know when they are away on vacation and often offers advice or a helping hand.
Barb and John speak about the early days of their relationship with Sylvia in the context of layers.
The layers of our lives include those on the inner and outer parts: observers that occasionally enter our orbit in whatever way fate determines it.
“With the power of a knock, you can knock all day,” Barb says. But it's not until they open the door that you have an opportunity to make a difference.”
Barb and John describe Sylvia as a hometown girl who is strong-willed, very independent and also someone who hasn’t had the easiest life. In their sparse moments together, they learned her late son was a hoarder, and she suffered from loneliness.
The couple, sensing more to be concerned about, moved cautiously and thoughtfully. In their conversations, “different things would lead to other things,” as Barb articulates it.
Eventually, in the dead of winter, they learned her furnace wasn’t working and that she had no money to fix it. That was the catalyst.
They agreed to intervene and made several cold calls before identifying someone who agreed to replace and install her furnace.
The couple was eventually invited to witness the conditions firsthand — a visit that set off a series of events.
What they eventually discovered was unimaginable; the furnace was the “tip of the iceberg.”
“Her house was in horrible disarray and clutter,” Barb shares. “She's a smoker and had animals, holes in her floors and very few things that worked in her house, including plumbing that was leaking or didn't work.”
The home also had a terrible mouse infestation, a leaky roof and spider webs hanging from the ceiling in every room.
“I said, ‘Sophia, you do not have to live like this,” Barb recalls before the three eventually embraced in a tearful hug.
“We walked out of there and were committed; it didn't matter what it took,” Barb says.
The couple expended hours, sweat, tears and, occasionally, their own dollars to fix Sylvia’s home. Beyond their unconditional love, the greatest gift was securing $115,000 from a government agency to rehab her home after helping her weed through and submit a 12-page application while insisting on more resources. Sylvia could not do it alone without the internet or a cell phone.
They were her lifeline. They stepped in to help someone they felt had been marginalized because of how she lived and the resources she lacked, including individuals who loved her and were willing to be her champion.
“I just kept thinking to if it were my family, if it was someone I loved and cared about, I would hope somebody would offer to help them,” Barb says. That’s really what our lives are about — being there for others, supporting other people and making them feel valued and making them safe, [especially] in their own home.”
The couple continues to manage a GoFundMe Page for Sylvia and remains a steady presence in her life.
For Barb and John, volunteering for Meals on Wheels is about more than a nutritious meal. It’s a chance to connect with someone who craves and needs that connection more than you ever imagined.
“The meal is the avenue to connecting with that person and providing what they need,” Barb says.
It’s about opening your heart to what’s awaiting you on the other side of a knock.
Meals on Wheels America and Home Instead, an Honor Company, honored three volunteer stories through the inaugural Power of a Knock National Volunteer Award: Debbie, Cathi and Barb and John. All have witnessed and been a part of the incredible power a knock on the door has to transform lives. Learn more at www.mealsonwheelsamerica.org/knock.