Hot meals for homeless

Chick-Fil-A donated 300 hot meals Wednesday to Serving People in Need (SPIN).

The hot meals were delivered to SPIN for distribution to the poor and the homeless in the streets.

“We feel like we’ve been blessed so we want to bless others and help where we can, and so we decided we wanted to feed the hungry,” said Tammy Guadagno, owner of Chick-Fil-A on Bristol Street in Santa Ana.

Serving People In Need is a Costa Mesa-based nonprofit that has been feeding the homeless and helping people get back on their feet for 20 years.

SPIN has three programs: the Street Services Program, the Substance Abuse Rehabilitation Program and the Guided Assistance to Permanent Placement.

The street service program provides about 350 meals each week to people on the street. The food goes in the organization’s van and is distributed to homeless people.

“Today, the homeless are not who you think,” said Jean Wegener, SPIN’s executive director. “A lot of the homeless are your next-door neighbor, the person you saw for 20 or 30 years in front of you in the grocery store, the middle to high income, who lost their jobs through no fault of their own.”

There are about 400 people in SPIN’s substance abuse program, which runs for six to 18 months, Wegener said. SPIN works with organizations throughout Orange County, such as jails and hospitals, to help those with substance-abuse problems defeat the habit. SPIN also provides food, counseling, opportunities for job re-entry, education, buss passes and dental services for those in the program.

The permanent placement program opens the door of opportunities to the homeless by helping them find homes and by providing them with the move-in costs.

But they have to work very hard, Wegener said. Those who get into the two-year program must work, go to school and maintain their jobs to be able to pay their rent and needs.

SPIN is just one of the organizations that Chick-Fil-A is donating meals to. Each $5 meal a customer purchases is doubled by the restaurant and donated to organizations throughout Orange County who feed the homeless, Guadagno said.

Wednesday’s delivery of meals to SPIN was not the first. The restaurant gave 300 meals last week and plans on giving more next week.

While researching different organizations who help the homeless and the hungry, Guadagno said she was heartbroken to learn that 40,000 people in Orange County go without a meal each day.

Guadagno learned about SPIN through a friend who volunteers with the nonprofit.

“She said they were just a fabulous organization and I just felt — ‘goodness, if we can just find a group to help give the food out, then we can actually give more because it’s hard to continue to run the restaurant and also be out there to find places to give food,’” Guadagno said.

Wegener said she’s grateful for Chick-Fil-A’s donation.

“It’s absolutely fabulous. It’s terrific,” Wegener said. “It’s very hard to get donations for street service food; money is late coming in to the county this year, which is our only steady source of income for that food. The benefit of having that is a great deal of savings for us.”

Chick-Fil-A will double each $5 meal until the end of December.