It was the spirit of volunteerism and a little chance that brought Bruce Arroyo and Evelyn Rowley together more than 10 years ago.
“I used to just come to the senior center to work out and eat lunch,” Arroyo, 68, said. “And then one day they needed help serving at lunch. I started filling in every now and then, and then they asked me to take a guy’s place volunteering once a week. They just happened to ask me on the same day that she was working.”
“I’d been volunteering during lunches here for years before that,” Rowley, 78, said. “We met here while helping people, and we’ve been together ever since.”
The couple have also been mainstay lunch servers every Wednesday at the Thornton Senior Center since then.
At noon every weekday, the senior center at 9471 Dorothy Blvd. serves lunch as part of its meal program with the help of people through , the city’s central volunteer organization program, to make sure the whole thing go off without a hitch.
“This server position is crucial five days a week,” said Jenny Ressl, recreation coordinator for the Thornton Senior Center. “If we’re serving lunch, we have a server scheduled no matter what because even if we don’t have that many folks here, we still don’t have the staff to do everything.”
In fact, the senior center uses volunteers through Volunteer Thornton for all kinds of programs that otherwise wouldn’t exist at all.
“We have special event servers, we have bingo callers, we have the Yesteryear Singers who perform here and throughout Thornton, now we have Woodcarvers who come in on Mondays and host programs here,” Ressl said. “We have a ton of volunteers and positions for volunteers, and we couldn’t do any of it without them.”
Volunteer Thornton has been part of the city for 20 years. It officially started in April 1997 with the Snowbusters program where residents volunteer to shovel snow for elderly and disabled residents in the city.
“It was a grassroots, informal snow-shoveling collective, and that was the root of what would become the volunteer program,” said Linda Lowe, who has served as the city’s volunteer coordinator for 19 of the program’s 20 years. “There were probably less than 50 volunteers when I started; just a few people out doing Snowbusters and helping to serve meals at the senior center. It’s just grown tremendously since then.”
Today, there are more than 900 active volunteers for the city, and over 25 volunteer programs that meet on a regular basis — not to mention the intermittent, one-time volunteer opportunities that pop up every now and then, such as painting the Margaret C. Carpenter Park carousel to get it ready for the season.
“The majority of our volunteer programs are definitely recreation programs, like our softball program,” said Krystle Codrey, arts and volunteer coordinator for Thornton. “There are about 250 coaches throughout that entire program, and each one of those coaches puts in well over 100 hours (of volunteer work) every summer. That program wouldn’t exist without those volunteers.”
Thornton itself is actually rooted in volunteerism. It started with residents who came forward to help when the city was first being built.
“They came to be the police, be the fire department, be the city government and so forth,” Codrey said. “And in April 1997, they just made it formal. But Thornton is truly built on that volunteer spirit, and the city has really benefitted over the years from the skills and services that have been harnessed from our community.”
Residents looking for volunteer opportunities in Thornton can drop off general applications to Codrey at the Thornton Arts & Culture Center, 9209 Dorothy Blvd., . If they want, people can just describe the kind of things they would like to do for the city, and then they either get placed into existing programs or make a new one altogether.
“The city is really utilizing volunteers much better than 20 years ago,” Lowe said. “I think they realized what volunteers can do and the kinds of skills and talents that they bring. It’s been a real eye opener to the rest of the city that there are volunteers available to help them and be an extra set of eyes and ears and hands to do things that they would love to do but just didn’t have the manpower to do.”
Over the years, volunteer opportunities morphed from serving lunches and shoveling snow to more niche and specialized services. Lowe said one unique volunteer program is the city’s victim advocate program.
“They are true paraprofessionals,” Lowe said. “When there’s a crime, volunteers go out on scene and help stabilize the family, stabilize whatever’s going on and provide immediate resources from someone who’s objective and empathetic. That’s a very unique position that we offer, but honestly, if people come in and they have skills and an idea, we will often just work with that and try to come up with opportunities that will fit what they’re interested in doing.”
For Rowley and Arroyo, it was just about helping their friends.
“I’ve been volunteering here somewhere between 15 and 20 years,” Rowley said. “I enjoy the work. I came here to help people and that’s what I get to do. But we’ve also made a lot of friends over the years here. On days we’re not volunteering, we just come here and sit down and chat with everyone.”
“I just started helping people carry their trays,” Arroyo said. “I didn’t know it was going to be so important or lead to everything that it led to.”
TO VOLUNTEER
Contact Volunteer Thornton:
volunteers@cityofthornton.net
Phone: 720-977-5885