Serving Orange County Families Since 1986

Someone Cares is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit serving Orange County, CA founded in 1986 by Merle Hatleberg. At the time, Merle was a site director for a seniors program in Costa Mesa. She was deeply troubled by the many hungry people, especially schoolaged children, who came to her door but did not qualify for her existing feeding program. 

Drawing on her own limited funds, Merle made her first pot of soup on June 15, 1986, serving about 30 people. From 1986 until 1997, the Someone Cares operated out of local churches and the Rea Community Center. In 1997, thanks to local business fundraisers, the organization was able to purchase its own permanent building—a former Chinese restaurant. 

Today, Someone Cares has grown operations, feeding an average of 300 people daily onsite. The organization also hosts several impactful programs in the community, including the monthly Farmers Market and Community Resource Fair and multiple offsite food distributions for families, seniors, veterans, and others in need. 

Someone Cares is deeply rooted in coastal Orange County, utilizing an extensive network of relationships and professional connections to feed hungry people and create opportunities to directly engage with communities in need of food resources, medical attention, jobs training, housing resources, after-school tutoring, and more. 

Our core mission is straightforward: to feed a daily nutritional meal to those in need. This includes the homeless, the unemployed, the working poor, the mentally and physically challenged, senior citizens, and, most importantly, the children. 

We offer this meal to our guests in a friendly, non-threatening atmosphere. We firmly believe that no one should go to bed hungry. The meal we serve is nutritional, tasteful, and prepared fresh daily—consisting of freshly-prepared soup, lettuce and fruit salads, hearty side dishes, bread, dessert, milk, and water.

More broadly, we provide essential wrap-around services to address a variety of needs, including: employment training, emergency shelter, and health care and mental health resources. Our proven success helps guests attain and maintain self-sufficiency. 

 We believe that feeding both the minds and bodies of children is vital to their well-being. Therefore, in 2001, we implemented the Someone Cares tutoring program. This program started as an opportunity to serve a population in need of social services from Pomona Elementary Administration as has since grown! 

The program now offers after-school literacy and academic achievement assistance to impoverished and at-risk students in K-6th grade in partnership with Newport-Mesa Unified School District. The children's parents are typically in the low-to-very-low-income bracket or have no income, and most do not speak English. 

Each child receives individual instruction in the following areas: 

• Tutoring in reading, spelling, language, math, science, and technology. 
• Instruction is provided by professional, certificated staff along with several tutors at a 3:1 students/tutors ratio. 
• Assistance with homework is crucial, as many parents do not speak English and cannot help their children. 
•  Children gain access to and training on computers and software that foster academic and technical literacy. 

As has been our tradition, children are served either a meal or a healthy snack prior to being tutored, and they receive a take-home snack for the evening.