Meals without wheels: Delivery car stolen from senior center, food still delivered
Hey savvy news reader! Thanks for choosing local.
You are now reading
1 of 3 free articles.
Someone made it difficult for volunteers to get meals to older people when they stole a burgundy 1990 Pontiac Bonneville with state exempt plates numbered 15-475 from the St. Ignatius Karen Peterson photo
Patrick McGreevey delivers a meal to Edie Petty during his Meals on Wheels route.Senior Center last week.
“Who would do that?” asked Patrick McGreevey, volunteer driver for the Meals on Wheels program. “They must have hotwired it or something because the keys are still hanging up in the center.”
McGreevey shook his head in disbelief.
“I still can’t believe someone took it. It isn’t worth anything monetarily, but it’s worth something to us. I had a stick holding up the seat so I could see to drive. It makes no sense why someone would go to the trouble to take that old car, but we needed it. It got fairly good gas mileage.”
A few days after the car was stolen, McGreevey picked up 20 meals in aluminum-covered containers prepared by the Senior Center cooks and headed out to his personal full sized truck. He opened the door to the back seat and carefully placed the meals inside.
“The meals still need to be delivered even if we don’t have a car. I can’t let these people go hungry.”
He closed the back door and opened the driver’s side door to pull himself up into his truck. The movement was almost like climbing onto a horse. Once situated, McGreevey reflected on the reason he volunteers his time.
“I get more out of doing this than the people I bring the meals to. These are intelligent, wonderful people. They have stories to tell about their lives. I love listening to the stories. They’ve just fallen on hard times so it makes me feel good to bring them something to eat.”
McGreevey started to rub his shoulder as he drove down the road after an hour into the two-hour delivery route. Scoliosis changed the structure of his back at birth and left him with bouts of arthritis and a disabled parking permit hanging on his truck mirror.
“In winter, sometimes I can barely walk, but these people need the meals delivered. I’ve really gotten to know them over the past few years. When I see how much they need these meals, what I have isn’t that bad.”
Edie Petty stood on her porch greeting McGreevey as he collected her meal from the truck. He talked to her about family and her health. He usually spends at least 10 minutes talking to people at each delivery.
“This is such a blessing,” she said.
Peggy Johnson, president of the board for the Senior Center, believes those few minutes are very important.
“People know that he will be coming by at least twice a week. For those living alone, it helps them feel confident that someone will be coming by in case they fall or have an accident. They know he is coming to check on them.”
Back in his truck, McGreevey looked up at his miles per gallon meter. It read 12.6 as he drove up Highway 93.
“This is a 43-mile route,” he said.
The program reimburses him for gas mileage but the extra cost to the Senior Center created by the fact that the only vehicle he has is a gas guzzler worried him. The Meals on Wheels program already operates on a tight budget.
“There are some months when we barely scrape by. We don’t need to pay for extra gas.”
The stolen car served another purpose.
“We use the car to take people to the doctor and to the grocery store if they can’t get out. Around here, if you can’t drive, you are pretty much stuck.”
Along the route people noticed the car missing.
“People keep asking ‘what happened to the car you drive?’ I say it got stolen. They say ‘someone stole that?’ They can’t believe someone stole that car. One person said ‘If I was going to steal a car, I’d steal a Mercedes so at least I’d have fun before I went to jail.’”
At one of the last stops on the route, a gentleman with an Australian accent addressed McGreevey as “mate.” McGreevey is amazed by the man’s life.
“He’s been all over the world.”
The gentleman asked what the center was going to do about the missing car.
“I don’t know,” McGreevey said. “We hope we get it back.”
As of Monday morning, the Lake County Sheriff’s Department has had no new reports on the car. The Senior Center asks anyone that sees the missing car to please call the St. Ignatius Police Department.
