Alaskan Park Volunteers Find an Icy Mix Full of Fun : Outdoors: Hundreds help out in state and national parklands. Most serve in the summer months, but a hearty few stay on duty when the tourists head south.

Jerry Mills is spending the winter high in Hatcher Pass. He’s tending the closed Independence Mine State Historical Park, breaking trails, keeping an eye out for avalanches.

Mills is a park volunteer, one of literally hundreds who help out in state and national parks across Alaska. Most volunteers serve in the summer months. But a few, including Mills, stay on duty when the tourists head south.

Mills, 50, has a long-term plan: To know Alaska by serving in the parks. Then he’ll decide where he wants to settle.

“I keep hearing about different spots where I need to spend some time,” he said.

He’s in no hurry. Mills figures he’s got a few years of volunteering ahead.

After 23 years as part owner in a fishing tackle manufacturing company near International Falls, Minn., Mills decided that by the time he was 50, he’d make Alaska home.

“And that’s what I did,” he said.

This summer, he hopes to win a volunteer slot in Wood-Tikchik State Park, not far from Dillingham but well off the beaten path. His second choice is Shuyak Island, north of Kodiak.

Last summer he helped ranger Don Barber patrol the upper Kenai River. As for paying work, Mills says he’ll find it eventually--or maybe it will find him. “I haven’t got a hint of what it might be. I’ll run into something sooner or later.”

Until then, he’s cross-country skiing in the high country and finding out about avalanches. At the park in Hatcher Pass, about 50 miles northeast of Anchorage, Mills’ main chores are maintaining the generators at the historic mine and watching to make sure wind and snow don’t damage the buildings.

Mills just about makes ends meet on the $200 a month he gets as a volunteer. Last summer, on the Kenai, he got $250 a month, plus lodging in a trailer.

While Mills looks for for his Alaska niche, park volunteers Mike and Shirley Heinicke have found it.

They moved up from Florida when Mike, 78, retired from his job as a utility company lineman. The couple have been volunteering as campground hosts on the busy Kenai Peninsula for 10 years.

In winter, they house-sit in Kenai. When summer arrives, they’re on the job in a 28-foot motor home at the Crooked Creek Campground near Kasilof. They’ve been hosts there since the site opened in 1988, said 72-year-old Shirley, admitting she’s eager to begin this summer’s work.

Mike, a longtime angler, said he released two big king salmon last year--and that was after a cancer diagnosis and some surgery put him on his back for a while. He wasn’t down long.

“You’ve gotta be doing something,” he said. “If you don’t, you get old quick.”

Shirley says she’s no pushover when it comes to keeping the campground under control.

“When we first opened, there were fights and a lot of drinking--but that’s cleared out over the years. We have a lot more help now than when we first started,” she said. “We have a telephone now, and electricity.

“People come back year after year. We’ve made a lot of friends.”

There’s more to the job than chat. Some campground hosts have packed up and fled after a steady diet of trying to curb all-night parties.

Hosts are on duty 24 hours a day.

“People get fishhooks in their eyes. They have heart attacks and strokes--we had to take CPR training,” Shirley said. “You’re really there to help people.”

That’s exactly what attracted Deborah Higa to journey here from her native Hawaii last summer for a volunteer stint at Chugach State Park, a busy area near Anchorage.

Higa is vice president of a nonprofit group that offers employment training and scholarships. “You’ve got to give back,” she said. “That’s what life is about. It’s a little bit of aloha.”

At 44, she cashed in four months of vacation time, decided her three children--ages 15 to 24--could take care of themselves, and came to Alaska. She heard about the Chugach post and wanted to put her college forestry training to use.

Higa, a native Hawaiian who has lived in the same Oahu small town for 20 years, says the park volunteer stint was all she bargained for.

“When I came to work in the morning, I didn’t know whether I was going (to go) out on a search and rescue or work in the garden,” said Higa, who tended the greenery and lived in the basement at the Potter Section House, a refurbished railroad building south of Anchorage.

Higa also helped rebuild the trail to Flat Top Mountain, worked in the visitor centers and found time to see other Alaska parks.

“I wouldn’t mind being one of those people who get to live in Alaska--and volunteer on the weekends,” she said.

Where to Volunteer

Some addresses for volunteering in Alaska:

* William L. Kirk, volunteer coordinator, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 1011 E. Tudor Road, Anchorage, Alaska 99503; 907-786-3391; fax 907-786-3635.

* Nancy Harvey, volunteer coordinator, National Biological Survey, same address as Fish and Wildlife Service; 907-786-3512.

* Volunteer Coordinator, National Park Service, Volunteer-in-Parks program, 2525 Gambell St., Anchorage, Alaska 99503; 907-257-2592.

* Volunteer in Parks Program, Alaska Division of Parks and Outdoor Recreation, P.O. Box 107001, Anchorage, Alaska 99510.

Source: Associated Press