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STAR Awards Winners

Pamela Roland remembers the struggles she encountered as a young girl and the adults who stepped forward and pointed her in the right direction.

So when she became an adult she felt a tug on her heart for girls she saw following a destructive path - taking drugs, dealing drugs, dropping out of school, getting pregnant - and she sought a way to reach out to them.

"My heart was just hurting because I saw so many girls making mistakes," Roland said.

In 1986, she began to bring young girls into her home and help them build confidence in themselves; she counseled them in morals and values, instructed them in good manners, and helped them work toward a healthy future.

They became a sisterhood. They worked together and played together. They supported one another. They even gave themselves a name: the Kalamazoo Junior Girls Organization.

Twenty-four years later, Roland has shepherded some 1,600 girls through the organization. She has loved them, lectured them and provided them with life skills.

Roland, 57, has won many honors and awards for her work through the years. At the annual STAR (Sharing Time and Resources) Awards breakfast scheduled this morning at the Radisson Plaza Hotel & Suites in downtown Kalamazoo, she was to add one more: the Irving S. Gilmore Lifetime Achievement Award. More...

When Bonna Perrin was told she had won a STAR Award in the category of Community Leadership, she was shocked.

"I was speechless; I had no idea I was even nominated," Perrin said.

Perrin was recommended for her volunteer work in local agriculture activities, including the Kalamazoo County Fair.

Several different people nominated Perrin, each emphasizing she goes "above and beyond" what is required.

Sarah Hoagg, who works on the Kalamazoo County 4-H Leaders Council and also sits on the Kalamazoo County Fair Board, was among those who nominated Perrin for the leadership award.

"She dedicates her life to volunteer work - more than anyone else I have ever known," said Hoagg, who has known Perrin for 10 years.
More...

Photo by Adrian Johnson
Story by Kalamazoo Gazette Staff

Early in his life, Virgil Sanford admits he did some things he regrets.

Now he is doing his best to help young people not have those same regrets when they get older.

After retiring in 1999 from a 17-year career as a maintenance worker in the power plants at the Upjohn Co. and Pharmacia Corp., Sanford, 70, threw himself into helping area organizations and churches.
 
He volunteers at the Kalamazoo Air Zoo and for about 20 hours each week at Victory Baptist Church, doing everything from plumbing work to painting to teaching Sunday school. A deacon at the church, he regularly makes visits to area hospitals to minister to the sick.

"I help out wherever I can," he said. "It keeps me young."

But Sanford’s "true calling," as he describes it, comes from his work with the area’s troubled youth, efforts that are fueled by his fervent belief in Christian service.

He volunteers at the Kalamazoo County Juvenile Home through the Kalamazoo Youth for Christ program, which connects trained adults with young people to help them make good choices and establish a solid foundation in life.

"There is a different life to lead than a life of crime," Sanford said. "I sit with them, talk with them, pray with them. I try to help them realize that they have something positive to give the world. More...

Jerry and Carol Ebel may be retired, but the amount of time the Portage couple devotes weekly to volunteering typically exceeds the hours put in when they were working full-time jobs.

And although their 30-year-old daughter, Marybeth Ebel, is overseas teaching, she also was a part of the 1,200 combined hours the three volunteered in 2009. Their efforts benefited eight area agencies and earned them a STAR award in the category of Family Group.

Carol Ebel said the family’s volunteerism stems from a basic belief.

"If it’s something that is important to us and we believe in, then why not make the time to help?" she said, citing Loaves and Fishes as an example of an agency that provides one of life’s two basic necessities - food. More...

Playing the waiting game at the West Michigan Cancer Center while her first husband was undergoing treatment there wasn’t for Barbara Cole Smith.

"I felt I needed something to do with my time," she said.

Maybe she could recruit volunteers - those who had experience with cancer - to be there for cancer patients and their caregivers, she thought.

A former banker and human resources director, Smith took her proposal to Terry McKay, president and chief executive officer of the Cancer Center.

"The program I talked (with McKay) about was a mentoring-type program," Smith said.
"She said, ‘When can you start, tomorrow?’"

Smith brought her proposal to McKay in 1997. By early the next year, Smith was the center’s first director of volunteer services, a job of about 20 hours a week with the pay being the peace of mind or maybe a smile her volunteers bring to patients and their caregivers.

"I get so much enjoyment out of it, seeing how much the patients get out of it and, in particular, seeing how much the volunteers get out of it," said Smith, 72, who is this year’s Senior Volunteer STAR Award winner. "They (volunteers) all say they get so much more than they give." More...

The Kalamazoo community might want to thank Steve Terranella for retiring early.

During a 27-year career as a project engineer at Kellogg, Terranella had little time for extracurricular activities. He traveled a lot and worked even more. His free time was spent with his family.

But after taking an early exit from his job in December 2005, the 60-year-old turned his focus to the needs of his community - and kids in particular.

When the Kalamazoo Deacons Conference Direct Response Servants was formed in 1968, its mission was to help people in need of furniture, clothing, food or paying a utility bill.

More than 40 years later, the goal of the agency based on Kalamazoo’s north side has not changed. Demand for its assistance, in fact, remains especially strong, said Teresa Johnson, volunteer coordinator.

That demand is met in large part by a core group of about 16 Direct Response Servants, a team of volunteers who show up regularly at the Deacons Conference and lend a hand with everything from folding clothes and organizing items to greeting guests in the entrance area.

"There’s no shortage of things to do here, but we depend on our volunteers for so many things...we’re blessed to have their help," Johnson said. More...

Photo by Adrian Johnson
Story by Jef Rietsma
Kalamazoo Gazette

Between her full-time studies at Michigan State University and a summer job as a camp counselor at the Kalamazoo Nature Center, Angelia Lane somehow managed to fit in about 260 hours of volunteer work last year.

The 19-year-old Comstock High School graduate logged 200 volunteer hours at the nature center, in addition to her camp job there, and another 60 hours at the Kellogg Bird Sanctuary. The efforts won her a local  STAR Award this year in the category of College Volunteer.

Lane said her school, camp and volunteer commitments leave her little free time, but she’s not complaining.

"My work as a camp counselor and educator at the nature center was something I loved doing, so it didn’t feel so much like work in the way a lot of people may think of work," Lane said.

A sophomore at the East Lansing university, Lane hopes to earn a degree in fisheries and wildlife, an area that complements her adoration for birding and the outdoors. She said it was the closest program to environmental education that the school offers.
This summer she will return to the nature center and serve again as a camp counselor, a job that frequently requires a 60-hour work week.
More...

Sometimes good things come in groups - like the college students working in the Community Advocates for Parents and Students Academic Enhancement Program.

The group is made up of about 28 students from the Kalamazoo College Civic Engagement Scholars and Western Michigan University's Epsilon Xi Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha.

In 1998, when he was a senior in high school, Benjamin Flaten was assaulted, leaving him with a severe head injury that affected his ability to walk and process certain information.

Four years later, while still recovering from the injury, he was involved in a serious car accident. He suffered nerve damage. Doctors told him he might never walk again.

They were wrong.

He spent time in a wheelchair, then began using a cane and leg braces as he learned to walk again. He still endures bouts of pain, occasional seizures and is waiting for feeling to return to the thumb and index finger in his left hand.  But he is very much walking - and a whole lot more.

The setbacks that Flaten, 30, has endured in his young life might make some who went through similar circumstances think only about themselves. But the Portage man has turned his sights on others, spending the past several years volunteering at different organizations in the Kalamazoo area.

"I don’t feel pain when I’m helping others," he said. More...

To say Fatima Mirza is an overachiever would be an understatement - she did more than 200 hours of volunteer work last year and has started several local organizations.

The 16-year-old Portage Central High School student credits her background as a Pakistani-American with inspiring her to do volunteer work.

"It kind of makes me step back and remember who I am. In Pakistan, they don’t have everything. They don’t even necessarily have running water all the time," Mirza said.

"Poverty is everywhere. Places where my parents are from (in Pakistan) face extreme poverty. It makes me even more aware of what is going on here. It makes me more sympathetic for people here,  just knowing that poverty is part of my heritage."

Mirza’s efforts to care for others have earned her a local STAR (Sharing Time and Resources) Award in the category of Youth Volunteer. She was nominated by Gulnar Husain, a Sunday-school teacher at the Kalamazoo Islamic Center, in this awards program sponsored by the Volunteer Center of Greater Kalamazoo and the Kalamazoo Gazette.

"It’s amazing to see such a passionate young woman - she does everything whole-heartedly," Husain said. More...

"When you send 70 students and 10 adults to do physical labor, you can get a lot done," says Patricia Byrne, registrar at Hackett Catholic Central High School.

And that’s just what the students and adult leaders who participated in the school’s 2009 Alternative Spring Break did when they went to New Orleans to help residents recover in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

"They installed flooring, insulation, wall board, base boards and painted, and cleaned yards which still have debris left from the hurricane," Byrne said.

"It’s amazing to see how much you can do," said Hackett senior Tamsen Glaser, 17. More...