A reward better than any paycheck

            Jane stirred her coffee, took a sip, and put the lid on her to-go cup. Strangers, we struck up a conversation in the hotel lobby as I was waiting for my sister.

            As she laced up her sneakers, Jane continued naming all the places she's been in the past couple of years – Guam, Haiti, Louisiana and Oklahoma. Those visits weren't for pleasure, however.

            Jane volunteers with the Red Cross and she was in south Louisiana, helping people whose homes had flooded in Plaquemines Parish due to heavy rains, courtesy of the slow-moving rain-maker, Hurricane Isaac.

            In her mid-50's, Jane said she was a therapist when she wasn't working with the Red Cross, and she specialized in mental health services for people in the suburbs surrounding Washington D.C.

            Jane never thought about working with people affected by disasters, but she heard the agency was in need of volunteers and she thought "why not."

            Working with the Red Cross had taken Jane to places she never dreamed she'd see, even though she was viewing them through the worst possible conditions. Floods, fires, tsunamis – you name it, she's been there.

            "The only disaster I haven't worked is a volcano eruption," she said.

            Over the course of the morning, about a dozen weary Red Cross workers came through the hotel's lobby, each one wearing a plastic workers' vest, name badge and sensible work shoes. One group didn't speak English, but their shirts reflected their affiliation with the Red Cross.

            One gentleman, Ron, was from Arkansas; and as he checked his papers and cell phone, he told me he'd been all over the United States working disasters.

            In fact, he and Jane had been in Louisiana together on two separate occasions, Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita, and he said the stories they heard from people who lost everything they owned in raging flood waters were heartbreaking.

            Reasons for going into such a demanding volunteer position varied. Ron was retired and wanted to stay physically active and help communities.

            Jane said she also wanted to give back in some way. She'd known about the Red Cross, and she researched what volunteers would be asked to do before signing up.

            She couldn't build bridges or haul lumber, but she could listen and help people rebuild their lives. And that's what she did, disaster after disaster.

            I've always believed there's a special place for volunteers who step up when there's an emergency. They give of their time, something most of us guard like the secret to the sauce for a Big Mac, and they carry out the grungiest of duties with a smile.

            They load sand bags and then, in the pouring rain, arrange them in front of stores and homes to keep the flood waters at bay. They sit in make-shift shelters, listening to people as they cry because they've lost their home or, worst of all, a loved one in the disaster.

            These volunteers are drinking warm, weak coffee, eating cold cheese sandwiches and taking quick cat naps on cots so they're refreshed and ready to go when the next wave of displaced people come through the tent.

            No matter what they're asked to do, these volunteers leave their homes with little warning and travel to far ends of the earth because somebody needs their help.

            Most have a smile on their faces and spend their days helping people pick up the pieces of their shattered lives. The reward, Jane said, is seeing that first smile after the storm clears.

            That's a reward better than any paycheck.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.