Still Hungry to Help Others : Calabasas: At age 87, Mary Alice Norton remains the driving force behind a Meals on Wheels program for homebound senior citizens.

Mary Alice Norton didn’t really give it a second thought the first time she learned a neighbor was hungry.

“I just invited people over to eat with me--it wasn’t anything fancy--like anyone would,” Norton said. “And if one of the men next door couldn’t come over, maybe I would take him a sandwich or something.”

That was 10 years ago, and today what started as a goodwill gesture has evolved into a Meals on Wheels program run by the 87-year-old Norton.

Although she can no longer operate a car, Norton is the driving force behind the Calabasas Meals on Wheels, providing about 200 lunches and dinners each month to homebound senior citizens in the semirural hills west of Topanga Canyon.

The senior citizens, many of whom are younger than Norton, sometimes crave the visit as much as the meals, she said.

“People get lonely at home and they like to see somebody, even if it’s just an old woman like myself,” Norton said, winking. “Of course, they like the food, too. The meals are wonderful.”

Every day, several of the program’s 25 volunteers pick up boxed food provided by the West Hills Regional Medical Center and make the rounds to half a dozen or more residents of the Calabasas area. Those who receive the meals are asked to donate the $5.50 that the center charges for each meal. But the volunteers will serve anyone who calls Norton, whether or not they can pay.

Norton still delivers food at least once a week with Anne Murphy, a nursing supervisor at West Hills Regional Medical Center, and maintains the ever-changing list of clients.

She said she started the nonprofit service, which is independent of the national Meals on Wheels network, a decade ago after she realized some of her neighbors at Calabasas Mobile Home Park were having trouble feeding themselves.

The idea to start a Meals on Wheels program came slowly, as more of Norton’s friends began to spend more time in and out of the hospital, unable to prepare food for themselves, she said. Norton suggested the meal delivery idea to the Calabasas Women’s Club and the local Rotary Club, both of which offered volunteers and funds.

“I don’t know how it happened, but people just started to call and say that they needed a meal, or they knew someone who needed a meal,” Norton said. “It has just been word of mouth from the beginning.

“People think this is just an affluent neighborhood,” Norton added. “But there are people in isolated places who don’t have a way to get their meals. It doesn’t matter where you go, there is a need everywhere.”

Norton and several volunteers teamed up with Woodview-Calabasas Hospital, which provided boxed food for the program at a discount rate, until the hospital closed last year. After that, the staff at West Hills Regional Medical Center stepped in, and has assured Norton that meals will be available even if the volunteers don’t have enough money for them, she said.

Ten years after it was started, the program still runs on a shoestring budget, with donations from local clubs and private citizens. The volunteers drive their own cars and pay for their own gas.

Usually volunteers drop off a lunch and a dinner--enough food for two days for some people, Norton said. A typical meal includes soup, sandwiches, salad, fruit, cookies and cake, and often a main dish.

The impulse to share food with others came naturally for Norton, the oldest of eight children who grew up in a large Irish immigrant community in New York.

“My mother would never set the table without at least two extra places for anyone who might come by,” Norton said. “Back in those days, everyone supported each other.”

Norton started volunteering in high school, planning events at an orphanage and a senior citizens center in Brooklyn, and later joined various Catholic charities.

After her husband died in the mid-1970s, she moved to Calabasas to be near her daughter, a teacher in Agoura. She quickly became involved in local Catholic efforts to help the elderly, and later joined the Calabasas Historical Society and other community groups.

Murphy, who has worked with Norton since the beginning of the Meals on Wheels program, said the pair has tried to help some of the most down-and-out senior citizens in the picturesque town.

“We’ve had some very tough cases,” Murphy said. “People living in very poor conditions, with no one to take care of them, or people with families who abuse them. Our role is really just to drop off the meals and sometimes see if they’re OK, but sometimes we end up getting a little more involved.”

But after delivering a lunch and dinner to Thelma Presetti, an 88-year-old with a broken arm, Norton brushed aside a suggestion that she acts as a role model for her customers.

“I’ve just been blessed with good health, that’s all,” she said. “I do this because I enjoy it. It gets me out of the house.”