SIOUX CITY | Four years ago, when he retired from his job as a crime analyst for the Sioux City Police Department, Herb Kuehne decided to become a volunteer.
He donates his time to several organizations and agencies including the Siouxland Interstate Metropolitan Planning Council, Sioux City Public Museum and Sioux City Community School District.
Kuehne says most of his volunteer work involves "office stuff." But four days a week he jumps in his red Ford pickup truck and drives around the city's near north side for an hour delivering nutritious food to as many as 18 seniors with the Meals on Wheels program.
Meals on Wheels generally serves adults over 60 whose diminished mobility makes it hard for them to shop for food, prepare meals or socialize with others.
"If we didn't have volunteers things would not get done," Kuehne says as he waits in a small cramped entryway at Connections Area Agency on Aging on Pierce Street, before getting in his truck and heading west with two large lunch totes filled with taco salad entrees and an armful of Sioux City Journal newspapers.
People are also reading…
"If you forget the paper, they let you know," he says with a chuckle.
Kuehne stops at a red brick apartment house and raps on a door. He says he uses a "unique" knock to let the seniors know it's him.
When no one answers, he opens the unlocked door and peers into the apartment before walking in.
"Food's on the chair," he yells.
Kuehne once arrived at a home on his delivery route to find a woman who had collapsed in the kitchen. He called 911. If he hadn't arrived when he did, he says she probably would've died there on the floor. Another time he helped a nurse pick up a man who had fallen in his home.
Kuehne heads north, pointing to a house on the corner. He used to deliver meals to a lady there. He doesn't know what happened to her. When he reaches his next stop, he parks his truck in a back alley and walks to the back of the gray house. Down a musty staircase, Kuehne enters a quaint, dimly lit apartment.
"Anybody here today?" he calls out.
No one's home.
He walks to the side of the house and hands the plastic tray packed with taco beef, pinto beans and Mexican corn, to a woman.
The meals, which are prepared by Valley Services, a nationwide food firm, at $6.75 a meal, Kuehne says, taste pretty good. The federal Older Americans Act subsidizes the cost of the meals and diners also contribute toward them.
At 17th and Summit streets, Kuehne parks his truck at the top of a hill and grabs a meal and a newspaper out of the back bed.
"The hills in Sioux City are interesting," he says.
In the wintertime, making it to all of the destinations on Kuehne's route can be tricky. He says he can't get his truck back up this particular hill when it's snow- and ice-covered. He prefers to walk. The woman waiting for his delivery is glad he made the trek.
"People are always very nice and very receptive (of Meals on Wheels)," he says. "It's a good program. It's a needy program."
