MADAM Fion Phua started volunteering in homes for the elderly in her teens.
With what she earned from her waitressing job, she bought oats and Milo for the old folk.
But the staff there poured cold water on her efforts.
Said the now-38-year-old broker of club memberships: 'They told me not to give the old folk food that was too good as it would prolong their lives. Also, the old folk wouldn't know what good food was.'
Disillusioned with what she heard and saw at the homes, she decided to strike out on her own.
She started by going door to door in HDB flats to find out what the elderly who lived there needed.
She explained: 'I decided to help the old folk while they were still living in their own homes. Why must we wait until they are in dire need and sent to old folks' homes before we help them?'
In her free time over the last 20 years, she has been reaching out to the elderly and the needy in one- and two-room flats from Geylang Serai to Henderson and Marsiling.
She is not with any registered charity and counts on her friends and contacts for helping hands to distribute groceries.
She also hands out household appliances, some of which are used but still-working items that she gets as donations from the public.
People who have heard of her work call to offer to donate items they want to give away. She then checks to see which families need these items and arranges for them to be delivered.
Items not provided by her circle of donors or sponsors are paid for out of her own pocket.
She is married to a businessman, and has no children.
She grew up in a comfortable home, the middle child of three children of a factory supervisor and a housewife, and considers herself comfortably well-off now - she makes a five-figure sum every month - to do the charity work she does.
She said: 'It's not about the money - it's about the heart. If you have the heart to help others, you will do it.'
She said her acts of compassion do not spring from any particular religion, just that 'it makes life more meaningful for me when I see that people appreciate the work I do and I see their lives improve. My personal life experience is so much richer, and this is something money can't buy'.
In January, for instance, she and her volunteers assembled 900 hampers containing food and household items to distribute to 300 families in the Marsiling, Henderson and Sin Ming Road areas.
In April, she paid for the 300 electrical fans that were given out to needy folk in Chinatown and Henderson.
Sometimes, her help comes in the form of cooked food, like porridge and bee hoon.
But things have not always fallen into place for her.
She recalled being unable to deliver a wheelchair to an old man on time - he died shortly after from a fall.
She said she was racked by guilt, because 'if we had sent the chair, he might have lived'.
But she does not allow setbacks like this to keep her down, nor does she think it is time to call it a day.
The busy woman has already lined up her next delivery of food to the needy on June 29.
