Marathon Volunteers Go the Extra Mile to Help

A group of middle-schoolers from Sierra Canyon School who spent Sunday offering bottles of water and words of praise to weary runners at the finish line of the Los Angeles Marathon were only a small contingent of the legion of volunteers on the scene.

But unlike those who were giving freely of their time, the students from the private school were earning credit toward fulfilling their community-service requirement.

It was clear from the start, however, that these students were not interested just in getting a good grade but in giving of themselves.

“It’s nice to get away from being selfish and to think about others and their needs,” said eighth-grader David Strumpf. “Anybody who has the time and the heart to do things for other people should go out and help meet their needs.”

“If all these runners have the determination to run 26 miles,” said Julie Szarvas, 14, “the least I could do was get up early in the morning and come down here.”

Sierra Canyon students are required to perform a minimum of 18 hours of community service over a three-year period (sixth through eighth grades). They have worked at homeless shelters, nursing homes, schools for the disabled and pet-adoption clinics.

The students gathered at the school campus in Chatsworth at 7 a.m. A half-hour later, they were aboard an aging, yellow school bus for the teeth-rattling ride to downtown Los Angeles.

All was going well until group leader Shelley Deutsch, the school’s coordinator of Community Service Learning, realized that they had been given slightly wrong directions for getting to the finish line.

But after a confab with the bus driver over a city street map, the group was on the road again.

“See, even the best-laid plans can go awry,” Deutsch told the students when they were rolling again. “You have to be determined and tenacious if you want to get things done.”

Shortly after the students arrived at the finish line, they donned official volunteer T-shirts, ate lunch, practiced “the wave” and waited for the first runners to arrive.

A couple of hours later, the first group of marathoners gingerly walked from the finish line to the rest area, where they were greeted with claps on the back and high-five hand slaps from the enthusiastic students.

The runners managed a weak smile, a whispered “thank you” or a simple nod in response. The students cheered especially loud and long for the wheelchair racers.

As still more competitors limped toward the students, shouts of “You’re the man!” “You go, girl!” “Man of steel!” “USA! USA!” and “Good job!” rang out.

“I touched a runner’s hand!” Julie screamed after giving a marathoner a high-five. “Yes!”

“What’s so great about this is that the runners are responding to the kids,” Deutsch said.

“The kids really do have a special way of making these runners feel good about what they have achieved,” she added. “That’s really what it’s all about: giving something back.”