Washington Holiday Angels: Colene Frederick

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Colene Frederick spent 34 years working for the Internal Revenue Service. But after three decades at an agency whose primary function is “taketh away,” Frederick invested herself in “giveth.”

Frederick, 72, and her husband, Peter, each devote a substantial portion of their retired life to delivering hot meals to homebound seniors under Fairfax County’s Meals on Wheels program, run by the Area Agency on Aging. The couple, who met at the IRS, now work as a pair, teaming up to coordinate volunteers and drive meals on a 26-mile route near Fairfax City to more than a dozen clients.

Fairfax County’s Meals on Wheels serves about 500 people each day and can function only through the work of more than 1,500 volunteers each year, according to the Area Agency on Aging. The mission is more than just food; they provide regular human contact to elderly residents confined to their homes, who often feel isolated during much of the day.

“In addition to nutritious meals, I think a wonderful thing about this program is it gets people to the door,” Frederick said in an interview from her home in Mantua this week. “They’re aware that there is going to be somebody there, and they do like to chat.”

She got her start in the program a few years ago, after she saw a blurb in a local paper asking for Meals on Wheels volunteers. “[Peter and I] were retired and we wanted to do something together,” Frederick said. “We just thought, well, we’ll give it a try.”

Now, they spend hours driving routes, scheduling meals for clients and organizing the volunteer drivers, even picking up the slack when another driver can’t make it.

“Anytime you do something for somebody, you get pleasure just from that,” she said. “We enjoy it. It’s just a fun thing to do.”