LAGUNA BEACH – Marianna Hof was sorting meat at the Laguna Food Pantry when a tall, blond man next to her burst into tears.
“I’m so embarrassed,” he told her, holding his hands to cover his face.
Hof hugged him and listened. He told her his name was Matt. He had just lost his job in the computer software industry. He was married and had three sons: a freshman in high school, a senior and one in college. The family lived in Irvine and he was afraid he might lose his home. He told Hof he had been looking for a job but had found nothing He was desperate to feed his family.
Hof, 74, a volunteer at the pantry, tried to reassure him and lift his spirits. “This is just a fun place and we welcome anyone who comes through the door,” Hof recalled saying to him. “He liked that and it seemed to set him straight again. …
“‘I was so worried, I didn’t think I would be able to feed my family,’” he told Hof. “‘This looks wonderful.’”
For more than a year, Matt came to the pantry every week to stock up. Then, one day, told Hof he’d found a job and thanked her for all her support and kindness.
“I felt like that is why we exist,” Hof said. “To help them recover and move them along in their lives.”
Matt is just one of nearly 20,000 people a year who shop for free food at the pantry.
What she does
Six days a week for the past seven years, Hof, of Lake Forest, is at the pantry in Laguna Canyon at 7 a.m.
She says the early morning routine is one she has had all of her life, and caring for people who need help is what Hof has done for most of her life.
As a librarian and branch manager in Newport Beach and Costa Mesa, she empowered community members who needed extra help by developing homework programs after school and persuading tutors from local community colleges to volunteer.
Hof, now on the pantry’s board of directors, said volunteering is a sort of tonic she needs. She sorts food, stocks shelves and greets every shopper. She helps people and gives tips on life; in return, she says, the work keeps her older body limber.
About 70 percent of the shoppers speak Spanish, so it gives Hof, who is fluent, an opportunity to use it. It also helps make shoppers who can’t quite navigate English feel more comfortable.
Sonia Perez, 43, who lives in Mission Viejo, is one of these. She was born in Guatemala. When she was old enough to work, family members taught her to sew and cook.
For nine years, Perez worked in a clothing factory where her small salary helped her parents support the family. She came to the United States at age 26, and found a job cooking at a small market in Mission Viejo.
She then went to work at Del Taco, where she met her husband, Natanael, who works the graveyard shift at Stater Bros. Together the couple have a blended family of six children and, despite their hard work, making ends meet isn’t easy.
Perez has been a pantry shopper for four years. Hof noticed Perez because of her beautiful smile and the energy she brings to the pantry.
“Sunshine is everywhere in the pantry when she’s here,” Hof said. “Her warmth is palpable.”
But for Perez, Hof has been the one who brought sunshine back to her life. “She makes me feel so welcome,” Perez said. “She’s helped introduce me and my family to eat more healthfully and she’s taught me new ways of cooking and flavoring the food.”
Perez said the food from the pantry has helped her pay bills and made life easier. It’s also made her and her family healthier.
“Before, when I shopped for food at grocery stores, I could only buy rice, peanut butter, pasta, cereal and milk,” she said. “I didn’t think I could spend money on fresh fruit and vegetables. Those were a luxury. Here at the pantry, I can get both.”
Korey Jorgenson, a retired Laguna Beach doctor who is the pantry’s executive director, said Hof is uniquely equipped for the pantry.
“She is bright, educated and devoted to helping people less fortunate,” he said. “Marianna radiates a kind regard for our shoppers with her welcoming demeanor, and when she has to set limits on the amount people take from our shelves, she does so with a smile and a total lack of judgment.
“We are so lucky to have her on our board and on our staff.”
Early inspiration
Hof grew up in Fresno. Her father, a plant manager for U.S. Steel, belonged to the local Rotary Club. Much of Fresno was based around agriculture and, each year at Christmas, Hof’s father and his fellow Rotarians would go to the shanty towns and bring food and gifts to the migrant workers who tended crops.
“I remember my father coming home and telling me what about the conditions he experienced when he went out there and just crying,” she said. “I’d never seen my father cry before. He ran a plant with 150 steel workers. As an impressionable 12-year-old, I remember thinking, ‘This is serious, it’s important and I need to pay attention.’ It was the seminal moment that changed my life.”
Hof’s parents sent her to Orme School in Arizona. Her parents thought the ranch-style setting where Hof slept in a bunk bed, did chores and wore jeans, would be a good introduction for a girl growing up in the late 1950s to learn independence.
And it did. Two years into studying international relations at Scripps College in Claremont, Hof grew restless. An adviser told her about a new program called the Peace Corps. At 20, in 1962, Hof was among the first women Peace Corps volunteers to go oversees.
“It was like, bring it on,” Hof recalled, smiling about her experience.
Hof first went to Bogota, Colombia, then to Baranquilla, where she initiated and supervised the construction of a five-room schoolhouse. She became the liaison between the community and the government. Two years later, the school was built and later named in her honor.
Hof returned to the U.S, married her Peace Corps partner and went back to college at USC to finish her degree in Spanish. The couple moved to New York, where her husband began a career at the United Nations. Hof, then mother of two young children, completed a master’s degree in library sciences at St. John’s University and took a job as a librarian at the Oyster Bay Library.
Her marriage broke up and she and her children returned to California. She also had a new man in her life, David Reydel, who moved with her. The couple opened an independent bookstore in Mission Viejo called Odyssey Book Company. The store held on for five years until a book chain moved down the street and drove it out of business.
Hof fell back on her library skills and landed a job as reference librarian at the for Orange County Public Library in Laguna Beach where she worked until 1990, Then she became branch manager in Costa Mesa Library and worked there until 1997.
She was awarded Orange County Woman of Achievement in 1992.
Making it human
It was partly her love for Laguna Beach and its community that ultimately brought her to the food pantry after she retired from the Laguna Beach library.
She wanted to stay connected to the many people she’d served over the years. At least 25 percent of shoppers live, work or go to school in Laguna Beach.
“A lot of people find it difficult to come to the pantry,” said Andy Siegenfeld, who has volunteered at the pantry for at least 12 years and has worked with Hof. “Some of these people have given to charity themselves and now fallen on difficult times. Marianna embraces the clients and makes them feel safe. She treats them with incredible dignity and makes it a human experience.”
To Hof, doing what she does seems natural and right. “It’s really unexplainable,” she said. “It makes me so very happy. There’s a lightness in my spirit. It’s a sort of satisfaction at the end of the day when I lay my head down on the pillow and think ‘I was helpful in this life.’ It’s a quiet inner fulfillment.”
Contact the writer: 714-796-2254 or eritchie@ocregister.com or on Twitter:@lagunaini
