At the head of a long row of tables pushed together, Cheyenne Martinez listened to the directions. She is in Portable 1 at Deer Valley High School in Antioch and has been appointed the production manager for a group of her peers, about a dozen special-needs adults.

“Thirty white bags,” the 19-year-old told one person. “No mac and cheese today. We’re leaving that out,” she instructed another. To a third, she said, “Let’s make sure we don’t forget the peaches.”

In a flash, the assembly line is rolling. Small white bags are filled with various non-perishable food items, including cups of noodles for soup, crackers, and granola bars. Teachers then take members of the class to a UPS site for mailing the packages to various Bay Area hospitals.

Once there, the packages will be served — to families so deeply in the grips of an emergency involving their children that they often forget to eat. It may seem a small gesture. In truth, it’s a vital one, courtesy of The Network of Care.

The Concord-based nonprofit organization, founded by Janet Frazier in 2004, provides in-hospital meals — “Bags of Hope” — to feed and comfort families whose worlds have been rocked by medical crises.

“People have no idea how long they’re going to go without eating in a situation like that until they’re in it,” Frazier says. “You just kind of go on autopilot and forget.”

Frazier knows. Her older daughter Stephanie died at age 20 in a Dec. 16, 2000, car crash that also critically injured her 17-year-old daughter Lindsey. As she grieved one daughter and cared for another, Frazier went a day and a half without eating until a nurse shared a bite of her sandwich.

The heart of the organization beats through the young adults enrolled in the Gateway Program for the Liberty Union High School District in east Contra Costa County. The post-secondary vocational classes are intended to give special-needs adults from ages 18-22 life skills, so they can obtain a job.

“It’s fun,” Martinez said. “We all get to do everything. You learn a lot.”