Not long ago, LouAnn Wood was a cook at Bellevue’s Overlake Medical Center.

Today, the 55 year-old Lynnwood woman is confined to an electric wheelchair, hasn’t worked in years after suffering a stroke and lives with her daughter and grandchildren.

“I couldn’t do it anymore,” said Wood, who visited the weekly Neighbors in Need program sponsored by Trinity Lutheran Church Feb. 7 to get a food voucher, a meal and perhaps some clothes for her grandchildren.

“I had to learn to walk again,” she said. “The doctor said I’d never walk again. I looked him in the eye and said, ‘Watch me.’”

Hers is one of many stories told by people living on the edge as the economy slides ever deeper into recession.

Friends in Need is one of several programs that have sprung up in recent years to fill in gaps not met by government-sponsored social service programs, most of which have suffered crippling budget cuts. Programs like Neighbors in Need and Annie’s Community Kitchen, a weekly dinner served by volunteers at Edmonds Lutheran Church, have seen a sharp increase in the number of people needing help.

Neighbors in Need volunteers open the church’s doors at 8:30 a.m. every Saturday so homeless and other low-income people can get clothing, a hot meal, coffee and grocery vouchers for QFC every other month.

“A year ago, a big day would be 30 (people),” said Dave Gunderson, longtime Neigbors in Need volunteer. “It’s close to 100 now.”

Wood’s on waiting lists for publicly subsidized housing. Her $375 monthly income isn’t enough to cover basic expenses, so she shares a house with seven others, including four grandchildren.

“The money’s so tight at home, we barely have food on the table, so I look forward to the vouchers,” she said. “I hate it when my grandkids are hungry or when they have to eat popcorn for breakfast.”

Eight church congregations have also teamed up, with help from the city of Lynnwood, to provide the South Snohomish County Shelter Network, offering shelter when temperatures fall to 33 degrees Fahrenheit.

Maplewood Presbyterian, Good Shepherd Baptist, Trinity Lutheran and Edmonds Unitarian together have provided more than 300 beds since the first big cold spell in December, said Trinity Lutheran Church pastor Eileen Hanson.

It’s been an unusually cold winter, too, she said. When it started in December, the averages from past years indicated they’d likely have 13 days of sub-freezing temperatures. So far, the network’s been called into service nearly 30 times since mid-December.

Every year, the YWCA of King and Snohomish Counties conducts a “point in time” count of the homeless.

The latest count, held Feb. 28 and 29, showed a slight increase in the number of homeless compared to a year ago.

But this year, YWCA regional director Mary Anne Dillon said, volunteer counters noticed something had changed.

“We had some working families who either had been evicted or foreclosed on their homes and they were either on the street or in a motel but the stories were the same,” she said. “They would save enough money through employment to buy a few days or a week in the motel and then they would be back out on the street until they could save enough money to be back in the motel.”

Often, people on the edge move from a car to a motel and back to the car.

Homelessness in Snohomish County looks a little different than it does in King County, Dillon added.

“People here are not sleeping in doorways or under a viaduct. They are car camping or in RVs. They’re in parking lots or motels, in wooded areas. It goes largely unnoticed because there are many places to hide in Snohomish County.”

On Feb. 2, a homeless Lynnwood man named Cameron Tennant, 54, a Vietnam War veteran, died of a drug overdose next to a fast food restaurant.

Hanson led a memorial service for him and some friends and acquaintances Feb. 7 at the church. Several friends spoke about the man who they say offered a helpful hand to others.

Rich is one of the homeless men who turned up at Neighbors in Need.

He’s 58 and has been homeless in Lynnwood for more than four years.

“I look forward to the Saturdays because I get warm,” he said.

He said many people might think of the homeless as a danger. Most homeless aren’t a danger to anyone but themselves, he said.

“I would guess 90 percent of us, we’re not a threat to anybody. We’ re not thieves or gangsters,” he said. “Everyone that’s in my situation, we all help each other out.”

Annie Fortnum’s seen the need as well.

The Edmonds Lutheran Church member started Annie’s Community Kitchen 4 1/2 years ago, serving free hot dinners twice a month to anyone needing them.

“We started with four people the first night,” she said, Feb. 4. “Tonight, we served 119.”

Volunteer gleaners gather donated food from grocery stores, including the Puget Consumers Co-Op in Edmonds and the Mountlake Terrace QFC, as well as food banks and Northwest Harvest.

Teams of volunteers prepare food at the church’s kitchen.

“We buy very little,” Fortnum said. “We have enough food that we are kind of considering doing a second meal.”

Donations have poured in.

A foundation gave the kitchen $13,000 and a donor provided $25,000 so Annie and her volunteers can buy a walk-in refrigerator and freezer.

“We have to say God’s blessed us in tremendous ways,” she said.