The New York Times - November 18, 2007
Tim Murphy

Ms. O'Brien, a retired dietitian, volunteers at Community Service Associates, a 21-year-old meal kitchen in the basement of Sacred Heart Church downtown. On Tuesdays through Fridays, the program serves breakfast and dinner to as many as 100 people, most of them working poor and disabled, many of them mentally ill and addicted.

The program, the only one in the city open most of the week, also hands out brown-bag lunches and gives several dozen people infected with the AIDS virus, or with the disease, bags filled with food every other week. Much of the food is donated, and during the holidays the contributions swell.

But donations are also somewhat random. Ms. O'Brien, 63, a garrulous woman who lives in Mount Vernon and pauses only for the rare Sudoku break, was chopping up some bok choi donated by a Pelham group that distributes locally grown farm goods. "I throw it into the salad and nobody knows the difference," she said.

But donations of fresh vegetables are rare, she said, compared with a seemingly endless supply of pasta, canned goods and sugary juices. "A lot of times I have to forget that I'm a dietitian," said Ms. O'Brien, who has volunteered here for two years.

After the breakfast crowd cleared out at 7:30 a.m., lunch sandwiches in tow, the basement was quiet, its decor spare save for several rows of empty tables and a plastic wreath of autumn flowers. On a table near the door were two enormous plastic bags filled with day-old bagels and rolls donated from local stores.

Occasionally people would slip inside and help themselves to the bags' contents. Sylvio Martinez, who said he lived in Manhattan and worked part time as a plumber in Mount Vernon, took a handful of rolls, saying he did so every morning. He said he didn't make enough money to buy breakfast. "It all goes to my bills," he said.

Half-past 10 marked the arrival of Roberta Apuzzo, 63, the executive director since 1993. A petite brunette in high-heeled boots and a long skirt, she has overseen the program's growth from dinner only to three meals a day, plus an afternoon arts program. "People don't understand how important it is," she said of the arts program. "It's a form of therapy."

She pulled out pictures of former clients, at least 30 of whom, she said, had died of AIDS. "We serve the least liked people in society," she said. She pointed to a picture of a little boy who used to come for meals with his mother. "He used to help out in the kitchen," she said. "He's 19 now, a big boy getting into trouble."

Ms. Apuzzo's son, Jared, 28, oversees the program's roughly 700 volunteers a year. David Chong, the city's police commissioner, said Ms. Apuzzo's work made his job easier. "If she wasn't doing this, there could be a problem for me," he said. "Desperate, hungry people sometimes do desperate things."

Despite being held in such high regard, Ms. Apuzzo says the program, whose annual budget she put at about $285,000, faces financial difficulty. She said a large part of the salaries for herself and her son, the only full-time employees, used to come out of the nearly $50,000 the city granted every year, but this year the city told her she could put only 10 percent of that toward salaries, leaving her to draw their pay from elsewhere in the budget.

That left her focusing on the fall fund-raising drive, which she said could bring the program up to $75,000 in donations. Her eyes lit up at 3 p.m. with the arrival of the art-program coordinators, a local painter, Adele Kamp, and Earlie Richardson, formerly homeless and now working toward his master's in art at the College of New Rochelle.

The two used red masking tape to put a border around a wall-length canvas, where a handful of women and their children were using markers to color in large flowers and lettering that spelled "What We're Thankful For."

At 5 p.m., dinner was on. About 13 volunteers from I.B.M. in Somers served Salisbury steak, new potatoes, corn, salad, biscuits, apple pie and juice to more than 40 men and women who had trudged in from the cold. One, Charles Preston, led a blessing. He said he ate at the program three nights a week and rated that night's fare "pretty good."

"The breakfast could be a little bit better," he added.

By meal's end, Ms. Apuzzo looked weary but elated. "Those new I.B.M. volunteers were a coup for me," she said, vowing to follow up by asking them for donations. "I love to schmooze," she added. "I really do."

Nearby, Bobbi Davis, 30, coaxed more food into her three children. She said they had been coming to the program on and off for about 10 years, and they expected to make the big meal there the night before Thanksgiving, where more than 100 would be served by members of the Sinai Free Synagogue, which was donating all the food for a traditional holiday dinner.

"I like to come here and see Roberta," Ms. Davis said. "The longer I've come, the more I've gotten her respect."

Asked how she would fare without the program, she said, "I'd probably have about a dollar left at the end of the month."

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