30,000 hours and still volunteering 30,000 hours and still volunteering (May 14, 2004)

by by Jeb Bing

V alleyCare's board of directors has just honored its well-known hospital volunteer Carol Andrews, and with good reason. She has just completed 30,000 hours of service to the Pleasanton-based health care system. Now President of the ValleyCare Auxiliary, her leadership is a driving force as the 300-member volunteer organization nears its one million-hour mark in service since the ValleyCare group was formed 40 years ago.

Andrews got her start as a hospital pink lady - as hospital auxiliary volunteers are often called because of the colored uniforms they wear - back in her high school days on Chicago's south side. She had completed 5,000 hours of volunteer service at Christ Community Hospital when her husband Bob, a physicist, took a job at the Livermore Lab. The couple moved here in 1964, and even with two young children, it wasn't long before Carol Andrews was back at her volunteer post, starting with Valley Memorial Hospital in Livermore and transferring to the ValleyCare Medical Center when it opened in Pleasanton. Since then, she has worked in every one of the volunteer positions the auxiliary handles, from pushing wheelchairs and gurneys to staffing the thrift shop and lobby gift shops to helping nurses and comforting patients and their families.

Andrews said that while patients are being cared for in emergencies, it's often their families waiting in the hall who need special help. She has cared for uninjured children whose parents have been hurt in a car accident and spouses of heart attack victims and others who are undergoing emergency treatment. Although the volunteers are careful not to raise hopes or add to the despair of those waiting, they try to offer comfort through conversation, by delivering refreshments and reading materials and offering other care services. Volunteers also provide free clothing from the thrift shop they operate for needy patients.

Volunteers work about 3-1/2 hours a day, although Andrews encourages them to take a week off now and then or at least to cut back on the daily work schedules most want to handle. Although dedicated to volunteer service, themselves, it's important for them to have the support of their families as well by being at home when they are there. Andrews points out that while many hospital volunteers are older women, more men are also volunteering and younger men and women are offering to serve. ValleyCare now has 30 junior volunteers, a mix of teenage girls and boys who are in local high schools. They contribute their time from 4 to 6 p.m. after school and on one of the weekend days.

The ValleyCare auxiliary also awards scholarships to deserving high school graduates who are enrolled in college-level health care courses - four scholarships of $1,000 each for those attending four-year colleges and two at $500 for those attending community colleges. Two scholarship winners are now nurses at ValleyCare's Livermore health care facility.

On holidays, Andrews guides her team in procuring or making tray decorations for patients, including gifts for each patient who must spend Christmas in the hospital. Volunteers make the rounds visiting with each patient, including someone dressed as Santa Claus. ValleyCare's program has gained notoriety around the Bay through Andrews' work in publishing her monthly "Grapevine," a newsletter that goes to each volunteer and also to auxiliaries at other Bay Area hospitals. She meets every other month with the East Bay Area Council of auxiliary presidents, where they exchange ideas and talk about problems.

Although her husband has just retired from the Lab, Carol Andrews, who just turned 65, has no intention of stepping down, herself. In fact, she's busy recruiting more volunteers and asks that anyone interested can call the auxiliary at 734-3368 for information.

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