CHARLESTON, S.C. - For Mel Goldstein, life is incomplete without a little struggle and the chance to do someone a good deed.

For decades, Goldstein, 58, has volunteered his time helping to comfort and to cheer children hospitalized for cancer, blood disease and other serious ailments.

He attended sick children in Montreal, where he lived until 1981. He volunteered at Atlanta area hospitals after he left Montreal.

Nowadays, he's at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston at least once a week making the rounds, chatting with bedridden children, playing foosball with those who can escape their hospital rooms, distracting children undergoing chemotherapy and taking orders for smoothies, which he promises to send over to the hospital from his restaurant across the street.

"That's just who I am," Goldstein said.

"Mel wanted to go into social work," his wife, Anne Goldstein, said.

Instead, he became a businessman, working in real estate finance and development. The volunteering has helped fuel that humanitarian impulse, but it was never quite enough.

So, when the Goldsteins moved to Charleston four years ago from Lake Lanier, Ga., they did something they never thought they would do, something they never did before, something risky and exciting and nerve-racking and fun. They opened a restaurant.

"We wanted to create a haven for hospital staff and patients," Mel Goldstein said of his nearby restaurant Blend.

"We realized we had a wonderful opportunity ... to do service to the community," Anne Goldstein added.

In the atrium on the hospital's seventh floor, Christine Messick, MUSC's volunteer program coordinator, told Mel Goldstein to run interference for the Chick-fil-A cow and its chaperon.

Mel peeked into Noah Wright's room. Noah is 5 years old and a yeast infection has cropped up after his heart shunt malfunctioned, his mom, Catherine Wright, said. He's stuck in bed but thrilled to see the cow.

Eric Wohnig, 13, of Pelion, is hospitalized for a pacemaker replacement. He'll be discharged the next day. In the meantime, he plays a little air hockey and foosball with Goldstein in the atrium.

Goldstein is one of about 330 people registered in the MUSC volunteer program, Messick said. When the program got started in 2003, she had about 40 regular volunteers. The goal, she said, is to facilitate direct contact between volunteer and patient.

"We're not only trying to help the kids, but we're trying to help families as well," she said.

To make it easier on families, many of whom have come to Charleston from out of town and must pay for room and board, the program offers Saturday morning breakfasts, comfort kits assembled by the Pimlico Ladies Club in Moncks Corner, baby blankets provided by Seacoast Church and toys from retired senior volunteers, Messick said.

"We are blessed to have a community so willing to help us do what we do," she said.

Volunteers are expected to undergo formal training and orientation, attend classes and visit the hospital at least once a week so relationships with patients can be forged. They show worried parents that it's OK to touch a premature baby or read to an unconscious child, Messick said.

"They make such a huge difference," she said.

The Goldsteins took it one step further with their restaurant, which Anne says was inspired by God.

"Often in life we're being led in a certain direction," Anne Goldstein said. "You just have to follow in faith."

The Goldsteins spent more than $1 million on structural repair and renovation. Downstairs they opened a sandwich bar; upstairs a sit-down restaurant serving lunch and dinner.

Families staying in town more than three days get a discount as do MUSC employees and low-income families. Patients in the children's wards get free smoothies. And Goldstein caters breakfast at the hospital once a month, feeding children in the atrium.

Upstairs, Matthew Niessner, former executive chef at the Sanctuary, prepares lunch and dinner.

"I don't want people to leave here with just stomachs filled," Mel Goldstein said, echoing a favorite sentiment of Anne. "I want people to leave here with spirits filled."

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