Building Soup-er

Maria Dzida has grown accustomed to begging--for food, for candy, for socks, for money, for anything she can use to serve the hungry and the homeless who come to the Loaves and Fishes soup kitchen.

For nine years, Dzida has volunteered to run the kitchen, which serves a hot lunch every Saturday to 300 to 400 people at St. Joseph Parish school in Santa Ana. Because of her efforts to secure donations of all kinds, Loaves and Fishes has a reputation as a gourmet soup kitchen.

“That’s the word on the street,” Dzida said as she dived into the kitchen pantry and pulled out a jar of mustard. “Look. We even have Grey Poupon!”

Keeping the pantry stocked occupies much of Dzida’s time. The 46-year-old mother of four spends 20 to 60 hours a week rounding up supplies for the kitchen. Her busiest time, of course, is the holiday season, when soup-kitchen clutter takes over the garage of her Costa Mesa home.

She constantly is soliciting donations from members of her church, St. Simon and Jude in Huntington Beach, and the students who attend the parish’s elementary school. With the money donated to the kitchen, she shops.

Once or twice a week, you can find Dzida at a discount warehouse buying food in bulk. Early Saturday mornings, she stops by Lucci’s, an Italian delicatessen in Huntington Beach, where she picks up donations of leftover bread.

When she pulls into the courtyard of St. Joseph school, her van is usually jammed to the roof with supplies.

On a recent Saturday, the kitchen overflowed with about 40 helpers, all volunteers and many recruited by Dzida herself. There was 73-year-old Bob Braden, who has worked at soup kitchens throughout the world over the last 43 years. And 9-year-old Mark Oseguera, who tagged along with Joe FitzGerald and Nelma Natividad, a thirtysomething couple who met two years ago at the soup kitchen and plan to marry in March.

Everyone was absorbed in preparing the meal: assembling bologna sandwiches, tossing onions and beans into the soup, chopping watermelon, heating cheese dip for the nachos.

Dzida, a tall woman with a calm demeanor, kept the chaos in check, steering people to various tasks from folding napkins to slathering whipped cream on ice cream sundaes. Whenever a question arose, volunteers called her name:

“Maria, how many slices of cheese do you want on the sandwiches?”

“Maria, how much water goes into the iced tea mix?”

“Maria, are there any more doughnuts?”

Somehow, at the scheduled hour of 11 a.m., the hot lunches were ready. Plates loaded with food were doled out to about 300 people who filled the school courtyard. There were mothers with children in strollers, homeless men and women with everything they own piled in shopping carts, and people who slept in chairs until it was their turn to collect their meal.

Some had come as early as 6:30 a.m. But each person who arrived got a number so there was no need to rush the food line.

“At first I objected [to giving numbers] because I thought it would be demeaning, but the guests like it,” Dzida said. “I think it gives them some stability. They might not know where they’re getting their next meal, but they know where they are in line.”

All who come to the kitchen are called guests. Volunteers greet them with a handshake and a smile. About half of them live on the streets, Dzida said. The others are primarily Latino families who live in the neighborhood.

“In many cases, they walk quite a distance to get here,” she said. “They represent the working poor. It’s very difficult to live in Orange County and pay rent and buy food. [The soup kitchen] helps them stretch a tight budget.”

Guests come for more than the food, though. For those who can’t afford to go to McDonald’s, Loaves and Fishes is a sort of family outing. Often, there are crafts set up for the children to enjoy while the parents mingle in the courtyard.

“There’s a real community,” Dzida said. “Here, someone knows their story--especially homeless people. They don’t find this kind of acceptance on the street.”

There’s a core group of 10 regular volunteers at the soup kitchen, but their numbers can swell to as many as 70 on some Saturdays.

“The real gift of the soup kitchen is that it brings people into this neighborhood who ordinarily wouldn’t step foot here,” Dzida said. “They come from Mission Viejo, Corona del Mar, Huntington Beach--all over. A lot of relationships have formed across socioeconomic lines. We’ve really become a family.”

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With Dzida acting as liaison, an unusual sister-parish relationship has developed between St. Simon and Jude, an affluent church with about 5,000 families, and Santa Ana’s St. Joseph, which she described as “a struggling inner-city church.”

Dzida speaks often to fellow parishioners about the hungry, and over the years, they have responded.

“She’s very charismatic and has drawn a lot of volunteers here,” said Andy Saavedra, a volunteer who helped found the kitchen 12 years ago.

Nelma Natividad also was one of the early volunteers drawn to the kitchen because of Dzida’s influence.

“It’s her resilience,” Natividad said. “She goes on and on. She’s so selfless, she inspires you.”

Dzida attributes her concern for the hungry and interest in social justice to her education and her faith. She has two master’s degrees, one in theology from Loyola Marymount University and another in public administration from Cal State Long Beach. She has been a social worker and a member of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in Alaska, helping the poor in an Eskimo village of 400.

She heard about Loaves and Fishes nine years ago at a benefit for Share Our Selves, a Costa Mesa-based program dedicated to feeding the hungry. She learned that St. Joseph parish had folded its 3-year-old soup kitchen because its director left and there was no one to run the place.

“Without thinking, I said, ‘I’ll do it.’ Then and there, I signed my life away,” she said.

Each month, Dzida launches a campaign for specific items from St. Simon and Jude parishioners and students to give to families at the St. Joseph soup kitchen. Jars of peanut butter and jelly, bags filled with candy and hygiene kits have been popular giveaways.

In September, soup kitchen volunteers passed out book bags filled with school supplies to more than 150 children. Last Christmas, Dzida asked for holiday cards in both Spanish and English, along with postage stamps, so soup kitchen guests could send a card to a loved one.

Dzida frequently collects socks to give to the homeless who visit the kitchen, and to distribute to the poor in Mexico.

“Homeless people go through a lot of socks because they’re always walking,” she said.

Dzida once offered to trade her homemade chocolate chip cookies for socks. She ended up baking 700 cookies.

“Maria spends a lot of time collecting stuff,” said Father Larry Dolan, pastor of St. Simon and Jude. “She’s especially known for her chocolate chip cookies, which we Franciscans appreciate.”

Dzida has an uncanny way of bumping into “angels” who give her things. “For nine years I’ve worried about money, but it’s always come through,” she said.

Several years ago, standing in line at a discount warehouse buying a flatbed of 2,000 eggs, she met two burly construction workers who asked what she was doing with all of those eggs. When they heard she was buying them for the soup kitchen, one of the men handed her a $100 bill.

“The next time I bought eggs I kind of waited around in the checkout line, but nothing happened,” Dzida joked.

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At the soup kitchen, people still talk about the angel that visited Dzida after the Christmas celebration of 1995.

“I looked up from picking up trash and there was a well-dressed man standing in front of me. He asked me who was in charge and I said, ‘I guess that would be myself.’ He said, ‘I want to give you this,’ and he handed me an envelope.”

Inside was $1,000 cash. The man vanished before she got his name.

“There was a joke that an angel had appeared to me,” Dzida said. She discovered his identity after receiving a check for $5,000 the following Christmas.

Now she’s hoping a benefactor will materialize to help renovate the kitchen.

“We use very old equipment. We joke that the stoves are over 100 years old,” she said.

Dzida carries the torch for alleviating hunger to classrooms, churches and the occasional business group in Orange County. She likes to invite students from local high schools and colleges to help in the kitchen.

“It’s important for them to be exposed to this, and the kids are hard-working and enthusiastic,” she said. “Who knows what seeds we’ll plant.”

Even gang members from the neighborhood helped build a concrete wall around St. Joseph’s school to make it safer for students and soup kitchen guests.

“No one’s ever dared to tag it, even though it would be prime graffiti space; it’s their monument,” Dzida said.

For Dzida and husband Steven, a real estate lawyer she met in college, the soup kitchen is a family affair.

Daughters Christine, 15, Katherine, 13, and Laura, 11, routinely help out. Eight-year-old Joseph will start visiting the kitchen soon; he and his classmates already helped fill bags of candy for the poor.

Christine has been coming since she was 7. “I’ve grown up with a lot of the guests,” she said, passing out plates to those in line. “The kitchen is a big part of our family life.”

She already sounds a lot like her mother when discussing the poor: “In this society, a lot of people don’t recognize that so close to us, there’s hunger.”

That’s a lesson her mother hopes more people will learn:

“It’s ironic that here in affluent Orange County we have such incredible poverty,” Dzida said. “Hopefully, those values of compassion and concern for social justice will pass on.”

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* To make a donation to Loaves and Fishes, or to volunteer at the soup kitchen, call (714) 542-4411.