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cried like a baby. Mary felt wonderful.
    The next night, she took her box of food to the homeless shelter where the elderly man was staying. The residents were surprised and thrilled with the unexpected bonanza, and Bev, who ran the shelter, hugged her and thanked her profusely for the help. Mary made sure that Meg, the young woman with the baby, also had milk, which the restaurant had included two bottles of in the box. The elderly man, whom Bev had told her was called Sam Harlowe, delved into the food to fetch a chicken leg. He ate it with poignant delight and gave Mary a big smile of thanks.
    On her third night of delivering food, after the children had helped her divide it into individual packages, Mary decidedthat there might be enough time to add another restaurant or two to her clientele.
    She wrote down the names and numbers of several other restaurants in the city and phoned them on her lunch hour. The problem was that she had no way for them to contact her. She didn’t have a phone and she didn’t want to alienate her motel manager by having the restaurants call him. She had to call back four of them, and two weren’t at all interested in participating in Mary’s giveaway program. It was disappointing, and Mary felt morose. But she did at least have the one restaurant to donate food. Surely there would be one or two others eventually.
    She phoned the remaining four restaurants the next night after work and got a surprise. They were all enthusiastic about the project and more than willing to donate their leftovers.
    Mary was delighted, but it meant more work. Now, instead of going next door to get food and parcel it up, she had to drive halfway across town to four more restaurants and wait until the kitchen workers got the leftovers together for her. This meant more work at the motel, too, making packages to take to the various shelters and families Mary was giving food to.
    It was a fortunate turn of events, but Mary was beginning to feel the stress. She was up late, and she was tired all the time. She worked hard at her jobs, but she had no time for herself.The children were losing ground on homework, because they had less time to do it.
    What Mary needed very much were a couple of volunteers with time on their hands and a willingness to work. Where to find them was going to be a very big problem.
     
    She stopped by the homeless shelter to talk with the manager and see if they could use more food, now that Mary was gaining new resources. Bev was on the phone. She signaled that she’d be through in a minute. While she waited, Mary went to talk to Mr. Harlowe, who was sitting morosely in the corner with a cup of cold coffee.
    “You still here?” Mary asked with a gentle smile.
    He looked up and forced an answering smile. “Still here,” he replied. “How are you doing?”
    She sat down. “I’ve got a place to live, clothes for the children and this new project of distributing donated food in my spare time.”
    He chuckled. “With three kids, I don’t imagine you’ve got much of that!”
    “Actually, I was hoping to find a volunteer to help me.”
    He lifted an eyebrow and took a sip of coffee. “What sort of volunteer?”
    “Somebody to help me pick up and deliver the food.”
    He perked up with interest. “The last time you deliveredfood here, Bev said something about what you’ve been doing. But she didn’t go into specifics about how all this came about. Tell me more.”
    “I’ve discovered that restaurants throw out their leftover food at the end of the day because they can’t resell it the next day,” she explained. “I found five restaurants that are willing to let me have what they don’t sell.” Her eyes brightened as she warmed to her subject. “And now I’m looking for places to donate the food and people to help me carry it and sort it into parcels.”
    “You’re almost homeless yourself, and you’re spending your free time feeding other people?” He was astounded.
    She