The Joy of Making a Difference

When Karen Oleon Wagener was a young girl, she was stricken with polio. It took a tendon transplant followed by a year of strenuous physical therapy and strong emotional support from her family to put the 7-year-old back on her feet unassisted.

But, then again, maybe her recovery had something to do with the potholders.

During the year Wagener was forced to use a wheelchair, braces or crutches, she began weaving potholders and selling them. In all, she made about $30.

Instead of buying herself something, she got her mother to drive her to her local March of Dimes office.

“I gave the lady the whole amount in change,” Wagener said. “It was a great feeling. It was important to me to fight polio.”

It was one of the first times Wagener experienced a “helping high.” Today, as executive director of the city’s Volunteer Bureau, she gets that high practically every day. As the city organization’s founding director, Wagener is responsible for developing and implementing programs for some 30,000 city volunteers.

“People talk about how important it is to be altruistic, and it is,” said Wagener, who reports to Mayor Richard Riordan. “But you should also volunteer for selfish reasons, too. It makes you feel good. The helping high you get adds to your good health and well-being.”

Volunteering is certainly beneficial for the city’s fiscal health. It’s estimated that Wagener’s legion of volunteers saves the taxpayers an estimated $40 million a year. Volunteers perform a variety of services, including helping out at senior citizen centers, parks and the zoo, or working as police reservists and librarians.

“I applaud Karen for her leadership, vision and commitment to volunteering and making Los Angeles a city that we are all proud to call home,” Riordan said.

Still, Los Angeles can probably do better. In spite of the fact that 44% of residents 18 or older volunteer, the city is still below the national average of 50%. Since founding the organization in 1995, Riordan and Wagener have stated their goal is to be able to fill Dodger Stadium with volunteers.

“My theory is it’s drive time,” Wagener said. “People spend more time commuting here than anywhere else, so they have less time to give.”

On Sunday, the city sponsored a volunteer fair in hopes of filling some more seats at Dodger Stadium. Amid a festival-like atmosphere, hundreds visited two fair locations--one in the Valley and one on the Miracle Mile--and were presented with scores of community organizations for which to volunteer.

The event, too, was a partial expression of one of Wagener’s closely held beliefs: Volunteers must be recognized. Gratitude is essential to attracting and retaining volunteers, she believes.

“We joke that all you need to keep a volunteer happy is free parking, a free meal, and a free T-shirt,” she said. “But what we know is that you need to treat them with respect and you need to thank them.”

One of the volunteers Wagener made sure to thank Sunday was her 75-year-old mother, Miriam, who validated parking for the fair’s Miracle Mile visitors.

Wagener credits her mother’s model for volunteering for her lifetime of service. Her mother still delivers meals for Meals on Wheels and also works at charity golf tournaments. “My mother really stressed you shouldn’t waste time and you should contribute to your community,” Wagener said.

That’s motherly advice Wagener has always taken to heart. After earning a bachelor’s from UCLA in Spanish and a master’s in Portuguese from the University of Wisconsin, Wagener joined the Peace Corps.

For five years, she served in Central America aiding in agricultural, forestry and health projects. In her final couple of years, she supervised about 135 volunteers as the deputy Peace Corps director in Costa Rica. It was, Wagener remembers, “a dream come true.”

But it was a dream that almost didn’t happen.

“I was intimidated at first by the thought of joining the Peace Corps,” Wagener said. “You can never forget you had polio. Your body tells you every day. Though I’m lucky. I can walk, I can dance, I can hike.”

The same sense of determination and flexibility that allowed Wagener to thrive in the Peace Corps is no less apparent at City Hall. In helping to build an organization from the ground up, the 53-year-old has been the force behind a host of innovative volunteer projects, including the Crisis Response Teams that provide on-scene intervention to those who have been traumatized by serious injury, violence or death. The teams, said Wagener, sometimes function as “the heart” of the police and fire departments. But whether it’s the relatively new crisis teams or a volunteer at a pet adoption agency, Wagener has nothing but praise for those generous with their time.

“The city couldn’t run without them,” she said.