Countywide : A Pair of Veteran Volunteers Set an Example for Thousands

Connie and Johnnie Chestnut together have given more than 43,000 hours in the past 16 years as volunteers at the Orange Senior Citizens Center.

The couple say they have raised money for activities, coordinated special events, cooked and served food and provided companionship for the lonely.

“We do this because it’s the most enjoyable thing anybody can do,” said Johnnie, 86.

Said Connie, 80: “A lot of people don’t get any attention unless there’s a volunteer willing to recognize their needs. And that’s what we do.”

The Chestnuts and other stalwarts will be among thousands of volunteers expected to pitch in Saturday for Volunteer Connection Day, sponsored by the Volunteer Center of Greater Orange County.

Sponsors of the third annual event say they are expecting at least 10,000 volunteers to report to 100 sites across the county to help clean the streets, paint over graffiti, pull weeds, plant trees, feed the homeless and help the frail.

At the Vineyard Christian Fellowship Hall in Anaheim, homeless people will be served barbecue at a picnic. Flowers will be planted at the Orange Coast Interfaith Shelter in Costa Mesa, and kennels will be cleaned at the Irvine Animal Care Center.

Other projects include visits to patients at hospitals in Fullerton, countywide collection of food for AIDS patients, and free dental treatment to low-income children at Lampson Elementary School in Garden Grove. Still other groups will be cleaning up Orange County beaches and having a carwash and bake sale for Missing Children Inc., a nonprofit organization that searches for missing youths.

The event, held in conjunction with Earth Day, aims to involve each of the county’s 31 cities and dozens of nonprofit agencies “to introduce people to volunteerism and to encourage them to make it a part of their lifestyle,” said Jeanette D. Wood, a Volunteer Center spokeswoman.

La Habra resident Mark Handler, who is coordinating the creeks and parks cleanup across his city Saturday, said volunteering “makes people feel good about their community and their own lives.”

The Chestnuts express a similar sentiment.

“Volunteer Day is wonderful for the simple reason that it makes people conscious of all the volunteering that needs to be done,” Johnnie Chestnut said. “If you get them to do it one day, as a rule, they come back and keep coming back.”

Volunteers are still being accepted for Saturday’s projects. To sign up, call the volunteer hot line at (714) 647-2600. Addresses of the sites in each city and directions to reach them will be provided--by a volunteer.