From a man who feeds the hungry with surplus restaurant food to a movie star who brings school supplies to Iraqi children, inspirational and positive stories are everywhere, Oceanside resident Barbara Metzler discovered.

"Anybody can do it," Metzler said. "From kids to broken people to hopeless people to wealthy people."

For the past five years, Metzler has sought out examples of how one visionary and passionate person, no matter their background, can make a worldwide difference. She collected their stories in the recently released book, "Passionaries," ($19.95, Templeton Foundation Press).

The most striking example of how one person can make a difference may be Mary Kay Beard, founder of Angel Tree, which provides gifts to children of prisoners throughout the country.

Beard herself was imprisoned after facing charges of grand larceny and armed robbery. She was caught after five years on the run and faced sentences up to 180 years. After pleading guilty to all charges, she was sentenced to 21 years in an Alabama prison and was released in 1982, in her sixth year in a halfway home.

While incarcerated, Beard saw women setting aside trial-size tubes of toothpaste, soap and shampoo to give as Christmas presents to their children at annual visits.

After she was released, Beard decided to help the women still behind bars by returning to the prison and getting names and addresses of their children. She and some volunteers then put up Christmas trees at two Alabama malls and decorated them with paper angels with the children's names on them. More than 500 children of inmates received Christmas presents from the project that year.

The project since has been adopted as a nationwide church program, and in 2004 alone it served 550,000 children in 22 states.

Angel Trees is just one example of how one person can make a difference, said Metzler, who coined the word "passionaries," meaning passionate visionaries, for such people.

"It takes passion," she said about the unifying drive behind each of her subjects.

Metzler got the idea for the book five years ago after attending a talk by a man visiting from the Dominican Republic.

"People asked, 'What can we do to help the world?'" Metzler recalled. "He said, 'You in California can keep some of the garbage from going out on TV.'" Metzler immediately thought about replacing some of that "garbage" with a show about inspirational stories.

With a vision of someday producing that show, Metzler set out to collect stories about people who have made a difference. "Passionaries" is intended as a series, she said, and Metzler is two-thirds through the second book.

The venture is the latest in Metzler's career as an entrepreneur. Before writing her first book, Metzler started five companies, including the Farmer's Wife, one of the country's leading fruit by-product companies in the 1980s.

"I've always been an entrepreneur, but I really relate now to social entrepreneurs," she said about people who create projects or businesses to help society.

Some or the social entrepreneurs in her book used their name recognition to promote programs: actors Paul Newman, Bob Hope and Hugh O'Brian, radio talk-show host "Dr. Laura" Schlessinger, former first lady Betty Ford, Bob Hope, President George H. Bush and Chuck Colson, who was jailed for Watergate-related crimes while chief counsel to President Richard Nixon.

But most "passionaries" are everyday people who saw an opportunity and seized it. Like Stan Curtis, who spent his teen years in a Kentucky orphanage and went on to be a professional tennis player and a successful investment broker.

As Metzler tells his story, Curtis was in line at a local cafeteria when a server removed a pan of green beans in front of him and replaced it with another hot, full pan of beans. Curious, he later asked what the cafeteria did with the removed food. He was told it was thrown out, because regulations stated that nothing taken from a steam table could be put back.

By mid 1987, just six months after discovering what he considered a wasteful practice, Curtis formed Kentucky Harvest. Volunteers began picking up surplus food from restaurants, hotels, food-suppliers and hospitals, and delivering it to missions, soup kitchens and food pantries. More than 750,000 pounds of food was recovered the first year.

A letter from Curtis printed in Ann Landers' newspaper column in 1989 gave the program national attention, and today it is called Harvest USA, with no paid staff but with 123 chapters in 43 states and seven foreign countries.

Actor Gary Sinise is also a "passionary" for his role in Operation Iraqi Children. After two USO tours to Iraq, where he saw children drawing in dirt and without books and school supplies, Sinise asked the school his children attend to help by donating supplies. Later in 2004, Sinise teamed with "Seabiscuit" author Laura Hillenbrand to start Operation Iraqi Children. The program was promoted by People to People International, and within a year it had brought supplies to more than 200,000 children.

Local "passionaries" are:

Fern Nichols of Rancho Bernardo, for her program Moms in Touch International. The program began in the early 1980s when she was in Canada and expanded when she moved to Southern California in 1985. Within the next few years, she and other members were publishing a booklet and organizing retreats. Today, the group claims more than 18,500 prayer groups around the world.

Rancho Santa Fe resident Joani Wafer, who with her sister, Dawn Bodo, started Kids Korps USA in 1995. The organization is a resource for many organizations, including house-building projects and working with the elderly, that can use children as volunteers. The group now has 75 community chapters and has conducted more than 2,500 community-service projects.

Betty Mohlenbrock of Del Mar, for her program Family Literacy Foundation/United Through Reading. A reading specialist and teacher, she was concerned about the country's diminishing literacy rate when she started the nonprofit Family Literacy Foundation in 1989 to encourage parents to read aloud with their children. In 1991, she formed United Through Reading for military personnel overseas to videotape themselves reading to their children. The learning tool also was seen as a way for parents to bond with their children, and it since has been adopted by the U.S. Navy.

Nann Gonzalez, a part-time Rancho Bernardo resident, for her project, Romania Outreach for Christ's Kids Ministries, a nonprofit organization that reunites parents with their babies in orphanages. Under the regime of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who demanded Romanian women in his country to have five babies, many parents were forced to give up their children because they couldn't care for them.

Metzler has no book signings planned for "Passionaries," but has spoken at churches, lunches and conferences. She also sends out updates from her Web site, where people can submit other "Passionary" submissions. Contact her at www.Passionaries.org.

Contact staff writer Gary Warth at (760) 740-5410 or gwarth@nctimes.com.