Chippewa Falls Mobile Meals program finds new home at Dove Healthcare's Rutledge Home

Mar. 5—After several years of running out of HSHS St. Joseph's Hospital, the Mobile Meals of Chippewa Falls program has a new home at Dove Healthcare'sRutledge Home.

Located at 300 Bridgewater Ave., the assisted living center took over Mobile Meals on Feb. 22. Mobile Meals of Chippewa Falls provides lunch delivery for roughly 43 senior citizens and disabled community members Monday through Friday. Meals are dropped off to residents in the program and cost $5 a day.

The program has provided meals to residents of the city since 1971.

Mobile Meals coordinator Sue Brick said finding a new meal provider was stressful for the volunteers, staff and Chippewa Falls residents served by the program. But because of the expedited timing of the Rutledge Home's coordination of the meals, there was no gap in meal coverage.

Brick said she called well over a dozen locations around town in an effort to find a new provider. She said the situation caused her to lose sleep so she was relieved that the Rutledge Home agreed to it.

"It's gone extremely well. We expected it to take awhile to get into a rhythm and we expected some problems at first, but it's really gone off without a hitch," Brick said. "We reached out to them, and they answered the call to help out the community. They went out of their way to help us."

Brick said the people who are served by Mobile Meals were very concerned about the HSHS hospital closures.

"That was a very big concern of theirs because, truthfully, that's what keeps them in their home," she said. "We have three or four people we serve who are over 100 years old. They couldn't live on their own without the services that our group provides."

Although Mobile Meals is pivoting quickly and things are going well, Brick said they "never have enough volunteers or substitutes."

Mobile Meals has nearly 20 volunteer drivers who deliver meals each week day, and Brick said it takes a lot of dedicated people to make the program work.

Dan McCreary is a volunteer driver for the Mobile Meals program who usually does a route one day a week. On Monday, he made 10 deliveries.

"I was retired and I just thought it would be a good thing to give back," he said. "It's rewarding because people appreciate when you come. For some of the people we deliver things to, you have to go in and do certain things. Like you have to set down the food and get dog treats and say hi. Most people just do it now one day a week, so it's now a huge commitment and you meet really amazing folks."

Denise Krajewski has been a volunteer driver with Mobile Meals for 25 years. She said when HSHS St. Joseph's announced its impending closure, people were very concerned about how the meal program would function and where it could operate.

"We were worried. We were sure something would be sorted out but expected to have to find an interim location to manage at first. Luckily Dove stepped in, and there was no gap in meal provisions for our clients. Dove stepped forward, you know, because there were a lot of calls made right at the time they announced the closure and we were actively seeking other facilities, other locals that could definitely support us," Krajewski said. "When they stepped forward, it was just wonderful that we could depend on somebody that was already in the community."

Rutledge Home director Kenarae Luzinski said when she learned that Mobile Meals had put out a call for a new meal provider, she didn't hesitate to begin making calls to see if the organization could help out.

"It's right in line with what we do — supporting senior citizens," she said.

Rutledge Home has roughly doubled the amount of meals it puts out during weekdays with the addition of the Mobile Meals food preparation. Kitchen staff cook the Mobile Meals at the same time they prepare lunch for the Rutledge Home residents. It's the same menu and people seem to be responding well to the food they are getting delivered.

Luzinski said she was contacted by Rick Peterson, nutritional services director at the Rutledge Home, who hoped that the facility would be able to supply meals for homebound residents of Chippewa Falls.

"Rick reached out to me and he put together some numbers and things like that and just said, 'I think this would be really great for our building to be able to do to help these residents out. I think we can handle it,'" Luzinski said. "So I looked at everything and after consulting with others involved in our operations, we decided we will take it on."

Peterson said helping out Mobile Meals "was the right thing to do."

"The first couple of days were a little hectic, but now that we got a system down, it's running pretty good," he said. "We pretty much just double up our batch of lunch stuff on weekdays now to accommodate Mobile Meals. Today it's chicken and mushroom tortellini with cream sauce. Some days it'll be pork tenderloin and red potatoes. The food is good. People seem to like it so far."

Peterson said the staff is stretched a little at the moment. The facility is in the process of trying to hire two more workers.

"Once those roles get filled it'll be great, but we are managing," he said.

Jade Fredrickson, assistant director at Dove Healthcare, helps Peterson out with all the meal prep work.

"We're making the cold lunch bags, we're getting the labels ready, we organize the coolers, things like that. All of our leadership team is going to kick in," Fredrickson said. "We just want to help."

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