Giving Time to Needy Is One of Best Gifts : Charity: Dozens of places seek help. Typically, hours are flexible and no experience is necessary.

Sometime before Thanksgiving, 1986, Leota Schmidt decided to honor her husband’s memory by becoming a volunteer worker for the American Cancer Society.

Today, she is one of its most valued volunteers for the 12 hours a week she puts in at the society’s general store in Sherman Oaks. All proceeds from the store’s sales go to researching a cure for cancer.

“Near Thanksgiving that year, I received a card from the American Cancer Society asking me if I could help,” Schmidt said. “My husband died of cancer in 1981, and when I got that card I was ready to do something to help the research process.”

With the holidays fast approaching, many people like Schmidt turn their thoughts toward volunteer work and helping those who are less fortunate. Jeanne Burr, the American Cancer Society salaried manager at the Sherman Oaks store, said it is common for nonprofit organizations to seek volunteers in the fall in preparation for the holidays.

“There are two reasons that this time of the year is a busy one for volunteers,” Burr said. “First, it is the time when more volunteers are needed to handle excess donations of food and clothing. But it is also the time of year when people are looking for a way to get involved, a way to help people.”

For those who are interested in volunteer work, there are dozens of places seeking help and a variety of ways to get involved. Typically, hours are flexible, training is provided and no experience is necessary.

“What it boils down to is that now and at just about any time during the year, people need volunteers,” Burr said. “There are entire organizations and support systems for all kinds of people that rely entirely on the volunteers.”

This fall, many organizations are concerned that aerospace layoffs, rising oil prices and the threat of an economic recession will prevent many people from volunteering. Cheri Combs, director of the Burbank Temporary Aid Center that feeds homeless people, said the center’s service is already feeling the effects of a recessive economy.

“The way things are going, many people who last year were volunteers may turn up as clients this year,” Combs said. “We are in desperate need for volunteers at this point.”

Combs said that the temporary aid center, which provides food for hundreds of homeless people in the southeast San Fernando Valley and neighboring communities, is looking for volunteers to handle the holiday rush. During this time, volunteers will be asked to put together food baskets and help sort Christmas gifts for needy families, she said.

“During any normal year, we tend to get a lot of people interested in volunteering during the holidays,” Combs said. “But this year we may be short of help.”

Other organizations, such as the special services department at Pierce College in Woodland Hills, are nearly always short of help, according to Director Norm Crozer. Currently, the department is seeking tutors and people interested in assisting disabled or educationally handicapped students with their course work.

People with experience in specific educational fields--such as mathematics, English, Spanish or the sciences--are needed to help tutor students who have difficulties understanding the course materials.

“But volunteers don’t have to have a special knowledge or expertise in the subject they help out with,” Crozer said. “Sometimes it’s simply a matter of helping a visually impaired student understand a diagram in a textbook, or interpreting a test for someone who is hard of hearing. There are just dozens of needs.”

Michael Mertzer, 44, of Mission Hills, volunteers time working with deaf students at Pierce College. He said it is important for volunteers to remember that they are not heroes, but rather fulfilling a civic and humanitarian duty to help other people.

“They are equal to us in that they are human beings,” Mertzer said. “Therefore, we must work together to make a success of us all.”

This is the attitude most volunteers take, Combs said. For the most part, people who give their time and talents are people who don’t want to be formally recognized for their work, she said. Rather, they enjoy working in the background and feeling satisfied with the knowledge that they are making a difference in some way.

Although most volunteer work requires little experience and few skills, there are many places for people with musical or dramatic talents to get involved. For the musically inclined, one such outlet is Cabaret--a professional entertainment troupe that performs at various Valley nursing homes.

Cabaret was started by Rena Dictor-LeBlanc, a Woodland Hills woman whose mother lived in a nursing home and enjoyed music.

“One day, near the holidays, my mother asked me if I could find someone to play some music for her,” Dictor-LeBlanc said. “So I hired a flutist to perform for her weekly and within a few weeks she looked years younger and had a new spark of life in her.”

Two years ago, Dictor-LeBlanc began contacting musicians and asking them if they would volunteer their time to perform at nursing homes once a month. From the beginning, nearly every musician she spoke with was excited about the idea.

“It’s a great need, doing things for the elderly,” Dictor-LeBlanc said. “These people often feel like they have nothing to live for. When we come into a nursing home and perform a concert or a series of solo instrumental performances, their eyes fill with tears of happiness.”

Although Cabaret is strictly for professional musicians, nursing home supervisors also encourage groups of children and nonprofessional singers to perform whenever possible.

More traditional methods of volunteer work also are available. In the San Fernando Valley and neighboring areas, 17 hospitals or medical centers are looking for volunteer workers to do everything from escorting patients from one floor to another to assisting nurses or working in the hospital gift shops. Hours for these jobs vary and training is included.

In addition, there are at least a dozen senior citizen services seeking volunteers at this time of year. People are needed to direct social events, walk and talk with elderly people, deliver meals to home-bound senior citizens and give lectures on health, nutrition and physical fitness.

People wishing to do volunteer work from their houses may make reassuring phone calls to elderly residents who live alone. To find out about this, people should contact the various senior citizen centers in the Valley.

“Elderly people are not just the source of needing volunteer help,” Schmidt said recently as she helped out at the American Cancer Society’s Sherman Oaks store. “When you no longer work and you are living alone, sometimes the best thing to do is volunteer your time.”

For senior citizens interested in volunteering their time, local libraries such as the Sun Valley Library, the Northridge Library and the Sylmar Library are looking for people to participate in their grandparents and books programs. Senior citizens are needed to read books to children for 2 to 10 hours each week.

“It’s just so important that people reach out and help these programs,” Combs said. “Especially at this time of the year when there are so many needy people who won’t be appreciating the holidays otherwise. If people feel like it might be nice to volunteer in some way, this is the time of year to do it.”

Kingsbury is a regular contributor to Valley View.