Serving Help and Hope, Hot Bowl by Bowl

To those who know Merle Hatleberg, it’s no surprise that this perpetually cheerful 78-year-old committed her life to feeding those who are hungry.

As a child, she helped her mother feed coal miners who knocked on the back door of the family boardinghouse in West Virginia.

“There was an X marked in front of our house, and everyone would always ask my mother what the X was for,” said Hatleberg, her eyes twinkling behind square, plastic-rimmed glasses. “She’d say, ‘You can sweep the dirt off it, but don’t get rid of it. That’s how people know where they can get a hot meal.’ ”

Hatleberg has carried on her mother’s work in more bountiful ways, first directing a senior lunch program, then opening the Someone Cares Soup Kitchen in Costa Mesa--a nonprofit operation that has grown from feeding 30 to 300 people a day.

Some of her “guests” are homeless. Some have trouble making ends meet. Some are young families. And some are seniors who live alone and have drifted into poverty.

She gives them soup, and if they need it, soap, a toothbrush, whatever she has handy. Sometimes she passes out coats. Once, she gave away her own.

Hatleberg, who lives off savings and Social Security and draws no salary for her charity work, said she lives by a simple creed: “If you see a hurt, heal it; if you see a need, fill it.”

She spooned out her first bowl of chicken noodle soup 15 years ago. It’s a ritual she has stuck with through the toughest of times: eviction, lack of money and complaints from neighbors who didn’t like the people who were drawn to her modest kitchen, first housed in a community center.

Even her own battle with cancer, a gradual loss of hearing and five knee surgeries that forced her into a wheelchair haven’t kept her from her calling.

“There’s always soup, and then we work around it with whatever else we get,” she said.

The soup kitchen is housed in a former Chinese restaurant on a tired stretch of 19th Street. It’s wedged between a liquor store and a thrift shop--its fifth address in 15 years. But her guests always find her, and the soup is always waiting.

Sometimes it’s minestrone. Sometimes navy bean. Sometimes beef or chicken with vegetables.

Often there are side dishes: macaroni and cheese, steamed vegetables, a tossed salad. And there’s usually dessert: apple crunch cobbler, sponge cake, doughnuts or muffins. Some are donated by local groceries, others are freshly baked by a retired Beverly Hills chef who signed on as Hatleberg’s cook.

But soup is always the main course.

“It really doesn’t take much to make,” Hatleberg said, her head tilting slightly forward as if she were telling a secret. “And soup is such wonderful nourishment. . . . When you don’t feel good and you have a cup of soup, something about it just makes you feel better. Everyone should have a cup of soup.”

People start filing in just past noon, leaving their backpacks and bags on a shelf near the door. A security guard greets each guest. If people become unruly or show up drunk, they’re asked to leave.

Hatleberg is like a mother to kitchen regulars.

“Especially to the guys,” said Sheri Wood, 49, a homeless woman who eats at the soup kitchen several times a week. “She has a lot of rules, but they’re for the best. And she’ll help you in other ways too. She gives you socks if you need them.”

And when the hearty, blond, curly-haired grandmother rolls her wheelchair through the dining room, a certain reverence follows.

“Merle has such a caring and loving attitude toward people; she gives of herself at all times,” said George Neureuther, who quit his job as an operations manager to work as Hatleberg’s development director. “And our guests have so much respect for her. They just love her. . . . A lot of people would have folded up with all the different problems that she’s come across.”

Helping people is her calling--one that took full root while she was directing the senior lunch program. Nearby was a food bank that handed out canned goods to the needy.

“I used to have kids coming to the back door asking if they could use our can opener,” Hatleberg said.

So she took a few hundred bucks from her bank account, bought a big pot, a supply of chicken and bags of vegetables and started ladling out fresh soup to whoever came by.

Her soup kitchen guest list grew quickly. She continued juggling her work with seniors and running her kitchen until she was diagnosed as having cancer.

“The doctor told me I’d have to cut my hours because of my health,” she said. “I thought, ‘Well, I like my volunteer work better than I like my job.’ So I chose the soup kitchen.”

But keeping it open was a challenge. Neighbors near the community center where it was first located said it attracted too many “undesirables.” The city told her she could use the center to cook her soup, but she couldn’t serve it there.

So, she struck a deal with a nearby church, but before long she was asked to move again, and again and again. It wasn’t until 1997 that she found a permanent home. She pays the mortgage and modest staff salaries out of the kitchen’s $275,000 annual budget, funded through private donations and grants.

Making ends meet is still a challenge, and this year has been bleak. Donations are down 70% from last year, and if things don’t turn around, Hatleberg may have to make some tough decisions, such as whether to hand out socks or blankets or even care packages, said Neureuther, one of seven staff members.

Hatleberg remains optimistic, though. She’s been through tougher times.

“My hope is that someday I will make a big pot of soup, open the door, and no one is there to eat it.”