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Cooks like an angel By Lionel Green - The Reporter Published January 19, 2010 Jo Ann Hawkins is a kind-hearted lady who happens to cook like an angel. For the past three years, the kitchen supervisor at Hospice of Marshall County has been preparing meals for terminally ill patients at Shepherd’s Cove, a 10-bed in-patient facility in Albertville. Hawkins and Cindy Garner are the two full-time cooks at the facility.

“The staff absolutely loves Jo Ann, which is evidenced by the fact she was elected employee of the year,” said Sue Couch, who supervises the kitchen staff. “She’s easygoing and never gets flustered. I can always depend on her. She’s a dream to work with. She’s always willing to go that extra mile.”

Hawkins also prepares food for the staff and the families of patients at Shepherd’s Cove. The staff raves about her kitchen’s chicken salad and sweet potato dumplings.

“She makes wonderful desserts, which is evidenced by the fact we’ve all had to go up a size or two in our clothing,” Couch said. “When the patients are discharged or their family members are here, they’re always talking about how good the food is.

“They never ask for something the girls don’t see that they have. If one of these patients wants something, we want them to have it, and they are completely committed to that.”

Hawkins arrived at Shepherd’s Cove after working at a retirement center.

“I really wasn’t hunting a job,” she said. “Don’t ask me what happened, but something told me to come apply for it. They had already had the job fair, and I thought, ‘I won’t get it.’ And they called me. I was just shocked. It was meant to be that I was supposed to be here.”

Hawkins said she enjoys seeing patients eat her food.

“Sometimes when they come here, they hadn’t eat in days — and then they eat,” she said. “If I can feed them for that one time, that’s good.”

Hawkins said she grows attached to the patients.

“We’re not supposed to, but it’s hard not to sometimes,” she said. “We talk to them and find out what they want to eat. We get to know them because we carry the food in. A lot of them’s too sick to eat the stuff we do have. They’ll ask for something different, and we’ll give it to them. Whatever they want.”

Hawkins said occasionally the kitchen will receive a strange request.

“We had one little lady — and I fell in love with this lady — who asked for fried chicken livers,” she said. “We don’t do that very often because nobody hardly eats that, especially if you’re sick. But we did that just for her. She couldn’t believe we did it.

“Then she wanted Spam. She said, ‘Did you ever have Spam?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ She said, ‘I want some Spam.’ So we gave her Spam.”

Of course, terminal illnesses don’t just strike the elderly. Occasionally, a young child is a patient at Shepherd’s Cove.

“That’s the hardest part,” Hawkins said. “We had a little kid in … I think she was 4 or 5 years old. She liked pizza rolls. She had to have six on her plate. No less, no more. She’d eat them for breakfast. That’s all she wanted. She was special.”