Rifle Family Keeps Meals on Wheels Tradition Alive for Four Generations

Rifle —The phone rings, a specific cadence that cuts through the quiet of a kitchen in Rifle. Valentina Epps remembers the sound from childhood, the way it signaled her grandmother was busy, not with a phone call exactly, but with the clatter of pots and the heavy lift of styrofoam clamshell boxes. “I would call the hospital and ask for the kitchen,” Epps told the Post Independent. “I’d talk to my grandmother and ask what she was doing… I always called at the same time, and my grandmother always said she was busy getting ready for the deliveries.”

That single sentence anchors a legacy that has spanned half a century on the Western Slope. Epps, who was born and raised in Rifle and graduated from Rifle High School, traces the family’s devotion to Meals on Wheels back to her grandmother, Criselda Chavez. Chavez worked as a cook at Claggett Memorial Hospital, the institution that has since evolved into Grand River Health. She started in the late 1970s, a time when the hospital’s kitchen was the beating heart of community care for those who could not leave their homes.

Epps remembers her grandmother explaining the nuances of the meals, the specific dietary needs that required a different touch. “She’d talk about diabetic and cardiac meals,” Epps said. “I didn’t really understand it when I was younger, but I learned when I got older.” It wasn’t until Epps was in middle school that the theory became practice. Her mother, Mary Helen Leyba, a member of the Catholic Church who began volunteering after seeing a gap in the service, took Epps along. For two summers, mother and daughter drove to the hospital to collect those boxes, a ritual that cemented the work in Epps’s bones.

The tradition didn’t stop there; it evolved. Epps worked as a hairdresser after attending the Glenwood Beauty Academy, but her path eventually led back to the hospital’s halls. About two years ago, she was hired as the volunteer services coordinator at Grand River Health. The role felt less like a job change and more like a homecoming. “I had a bigger connection to it before I knew I’d be a part of it,” she said.

Now, the fourth generation is stepping in. Epps’ daughter, Hope Escalante, volunteered more than 200 hours at the hospital while in high school. Her dedication earned her a $2,000 scholarship and the title of young volunteer of the year. When Epps suggested they go on a delivery together to celebrate, the two of them hit the road. “We laughed, we cried, and we got lost,” Epps recalled. The imperfection of the route — the getting lost — seems fitting for a service that relies on human connection rather than algorithmic precision.

The work is tangible, physical, and deeply local. Epps has even written a children’s book about what it means to volunteer for Meals on Wheels, available at Grand River Gifts in the hospital. It is a way to pass the torch downward, to explain why a family would spend their summers hauling food to neighbors who might be lonely or ill.

Epps speaks of gratitude and passion, a warmth that permeates her words. “It really does make me feel closer to my grandmother,” she said. “I want to give back to where I was raised.” In a region where the distances between towns can feel isolating, this four-generation commitment is a steady, rhythmic pulse. It is the sound of a phone ringing in a quiet kitchen, and the weight of a styrofoam box being handed to someone who needs it.