SMITHFIELD -- The Council on Aging is pleading with folks to dig deeper into their pockets and look more closely at their calendars to ease a "desperate" situation.

In the past six months, six volunteers have stopped delivering meals to shut-ins or steeply curbed their routes, citing high gas prices.

“This is the worst we’ve seen it,” said Joyce Holloman, manager of senior services.

The volunteer shortage is worst in Benson, where the senior center is without a volunteer 11 days out of 20. Selma has two routes open on Fridays, and one route open on Wednesdays. Kenly needs someone to deliver one route on Thursdays, and Four Oaks has one route open on Tuesdays.

In the absence of volunteers, senior center directors are running the routes themselves. But the state says Councils on Aging are supposed to use volunteers for home-delivered routes.

When employees go, the state has to pay them mileage — money not in the agency’s budget.

Some routes, like the one in Kenly, have been open for six months, so the state has been paying a lot of mileage to center director Easker Mitchell. Also, she has been forced to spend a lot of time away from the senior center, which is popular with older adults in Kenly.

“We have no choice when we’ve called everybody on our substitutes list,” Holloman said.

Most meal drivers are 60 and older, said Mickey Martin, manager of resource development for the Council on Aging, which hopes to attract some younger volunteers.

Also, she hopes churches and other groups will organize teams of volunteers, easing the burden on individual volunteers.

“You really have to have a heart for seniors,” Martin said. “What we’re doing is asking for an hour a week, or an hour a month, in addition to the tank of gas.”

In some cases, home-delivered meals are the only thing letting seniors stay in their homes.

Twice a month, Bob Stephenson of McGee’s Crossroads goes to the Pleasant Grove Senior Center and loads up his Toyota Avalon with hot meals and fruit. Before she passed away, his mother received home-delivered meals, so Stephenson wants to return the favor, no matter the cost of gas.

“I don’t even consider it,” he said. “I feel like the contribution is worth at least what it’s costing and then some.”

Estelle Walltich, who lives on Stephenson’s route, has two hyper dogs, so most of the time, he and other volunteers leave the food at her door.

She’s usually sitting by the window smiling and waving when they show up. “They’re all very nice,” Walltich said. “It’s a very good service.”

At Stephenson’s next stop, Braxton Johnson said home-delivered meals kept him from eating too much fast food.

Stephenson, who’s retired, said he gets back as much as he gives. “It’s very touching to me,” he said. “If I can give just a few minutes... this is one of the few pleasures they have. I saw that with my mom.”

For more information about home-delivered meals, please call the Council on Aging at 934-6066.