Seniors helping seniors

After recent budget cuts, the Costa Mesa Senior Center was planning on pruning down a popular grocery distribution program until two local women came forward with donations.

Flo Martin donated $2,000 and Joan Cox donated $500 to the Senior Lunchbox program, more than making up for a $2,000 shortfall. City officials who are responsible for doling out federal Community Development Block Grant money gave the senior center $2,000 less compared with last year.

The program allows the senior center to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables, canned soups and meats, and other items that are given to low-income seniors.

The food is given away the second and fourth Fridays of the month.

“Because the cost of food and everything has gone up, it’s going to allow us to maintain our current levels of service without reducing the number of people we can enroll in the program or cut the services,” said Darrell Kim, who administers the program.

Both of the donors are retired high school teachers with more than five decades of combined teaching service.

Martin has lived in Costa Mesa since 1967, but has never attended a senior center event. She spontaneously wrote a check to the center when she realized some local seniors could be deprived of the option of eating fresh fruits and vegetables.

“Ask my family. Ask my students. They say I’m a wild and crazy lady who does off-the-wall things, but that’s the joy of living as far as I’m concerned,” Martin said.

As an impetus for her giving, she cited an old saying her Bulgarian parents used to tell her: “The last shirt you’ll ever wear will have no pockets.”

Cox, a Lido Isle resident, takes a computer class at the center every week, and although she is not enrolled in the food program she understands the problems many seniors have with finances.

“[Senior Lunchbox] is so important because prescriptions are going up and many people don’t have full medical coverage, they just have Medicare, and that just takes care of part of it, so they’ll sacrifice food to pay for prescriptions,” Cox said.

BY THE NUMBERS

FLO MARTIN: $2,000

JOAN COX: $500

TOTAL: $2,500

HOW MANY SENIORS SERVED: about 70

WHAT THEY GET EACH WEEK: Fresh fruit, vegetables, canned soups, tuna, oatmeal, cookies, milk and other goods.

ALAN BLANK may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or at alan.blank@latimes.com.