Katie Tarbox has a small office but a big job. She’s the program coordinator for MCH’s Meals on Wheels and has been for over a decade.

If Katie were running a railroad, she’d be keeping the trains running on time and although Meals on Wheels relies on transportation to deliver its cargo, Katie’s job includes and requires other skills and responsibilities— a whole bunch of them!

“I’m organized,” she says. “This is not just a logistics job but I’ve always been organized.”

She has to be. Right now MCH’s Meals on Wheels delivers hot meals five days a week to nearly 170 people. That’s roughly 850 meals on seven routes in Knox County that cover over 400 miles a day.

On Katie’s desk is a thick pile of color coded sheets of paper representing a month’s scheduling of routes for about 100 volunteer drivers. Some drive weekly and others several times a month, each loading up the back seats and trunks of their cars on weekday mornings just outside the kitchen at the MCH building in Rockland where the kitchen staff prepare all the meals in-house.

Keeping that line of cars moving would be enough of a job description but that’s just part of Katie’s role. She knows every recipient and their living situations and medical conditions as part of the assessment that’s required to be eligible for the Meals on Wheels program.

Katie knows which clients have which disabilities and which ones need to have their meals brought inside as well as others who don’t want their homes to be entered. There’s a note for the driver who needs to open a milk cartoon for a man who can’t by himself and another for an individual whose food is already cut up and set aside.

She knows each individual’s dietary needs and support system. She has assessed each one who enters the program, helped them with any paperwork, and is knowledgeable of the policies that apply to Meals on Wheels from those of health agencies to law enforcement. It’s a full time job.

“There’s never a perfect day or a totally smooth week. We have a lot of moving parts."

Katie’s title doesn’t include nurse or social worker but she has acquired impressive skills associated with both. And like both, there’s a need for her not to become too attached to the people she is aiding.

“I try not to become too close but it’s hard sometimes. I’m human. Drivers also make connections with the clients they deliver to, and for them it becomes more than just bringing them a meal as well.”

In recent times the need for programs like Meals on Wheels has increased. Client numbers are up from a year ago with every expectation that they will continue to climb.

Katie Tarbox is passionate about the mission and its goal of allowing people to live in their homes and be supplied a hot meal so they can. She summed up both her goal and reward in a sentence.

“My satisfaction is telling somebody I can get them a meal the next day.”

And working with a dedicated MCH team, she does.