HAPPY THANKSGIVING:Holiday goodwill -- to go

NEWPORT BEACH — The knock is always apprehensive. The wait at the door is often long. The encounters tend to be brief — amiable but a bit awkward. The walk back to the car is remarkably satisfying.

Wednesday, I volunteered for Friends in Service to Humanity’s Mobile Meals program, as I have done several times when people are on vacation or can’t drive for some other reason. Today was my first time on route No. 10, which takes deliverers around Corona del Mar and other Newport Beach neighborhoods. But the route is not important. The stops along the way are.

Around 10:45 a.m., volunteers wedge their cars into a service entrance off Hospital Road at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian. We assemble in a hall outside the kitchen and wait for the hot meals to be prepared and packed into containers. Then we check our bags to make sure we’ve got everything: hot meals, cold meals, and two small drinks and at least one piece of fruit for each person — all to exacting specifications.

Friends in Service to Humanity (www.fishharbor.org) provides meals Mondays through Fridays to about 90 people who may not otherwise have a hot meal. Signing up is easy: Go to the website and click on “Volunteering” or call (949) 645-8050. Driving a route takes a little more than an hour.

Many volunteers drive the same route every day and know the tricky turns and maze-like apartment complexes well. But for fill-ins like me, finding each person is a small victory.

So is seeing them smile.

Sometimes, doors open to puzzled looks — “You don’t look like the usual person,” I can see them thinking. And some tell you so.

“I’m filling in today,” I tell them. “I hope I’ll see you again soon.”

And never have I meant that more than when I left Marie Bolton’s home off Bayside Drive. It helped that her soft, brown and white dog, Lucky, was waiting on the porch for me, but Marie’s kind spirit is what had me hoping, truly, to return.

I spent a too-short 15 minutes or so with Marie yesterday and learned a few things about her life.

She’s lived in Newport Beach for some 30 years and has been in Orange County for about 60.

She used to volunteer with the Costa Mesa Police Department, and went through the citizen’s academy training. Hanging from her refrigerator door is a picture of a blond Marie Bolton — she has brown hair these days — looking proud in her police uniform. She still has the uniform.

Marie is blind. So is Lucky. Marie said she’s on the waiting list for a Seeing Eye dog, but she won’t put Lucky to sleep just to move that process along. “He’s my Seeing Eye dog,” she said.

And she’s right. The two walk two miles every day, and, “He knows where everything is.” Marie rescued Lucky from Mexico — before becoming blind, she volunteered with a dog-rescue group.

Before I left, I checked that she was holding the four quarters she needed to hop on a bus to Costa Mesa to pick up groceries, and I patted Lucky on the head.

To everyone on route No. 10 after Marie Bolton, I apologize if I was late bringing your food. As far as I could tell, the hot stuff was still hot and the cold stuff still cold.

I hope I can drive route No. 10 again soon — but I think I’m on No. 8 today. And after I’ve driven that route, delivered those meals and enjoyed everyone’s smile, I’ll sit down to a feast, maybe two, with family and friends. I’ll be thankful, no doubt, for the excellent food and beautiful company. But I’d be lying if I said my heart would be anywhere but with the people on route No. 10, No. 8 or any of the other routes.

Happy Thanksgiving, Mobile Meals folks. You mean more to us volunteers than you know.

I hope I’ll see you soon.

is a news editor. He may be reached at (714) 966-4634 or matt.ballinger@latimes.com.