Volunteers Are on a Mission to Lend Helping Hands

Justine Sahli had a problem that seemed insurmountable.

A single woman recently transplanted from a small Northern California town, she had discovered that dust-like allergens in the bedroom carpet of her Costa Mesa condominium were causing asthma attacks.

“I was up five times a night,” said Sahli, 52, who suffers from the effects of a 1987 automobile accident that prevent her from performing taxing physical tasks. “It was a serious problem, and very debilitating.”

Not yet employed in Southern California, she couldn’t afford to hire someone to pull up the carpet and put down new flooring.

Enter Go and Do Likewise, a group of Orange County residents looking to do good. “I was praying about the problem,” Sahli said, “and had left it in God’s hands. The next thing I knew, they were here doing it and I started crying” in relief.

The group is the brainchild of Bud Potter, 62, and Terry Debay, 71, longtime friends who started thinking about doing good for others in 1996. Both active churchgoers who met in a Christian men’s group in the early 1990s, they were looking for a way to make their faith come alive.

“One day he said, ‘We need to go out and do things,’ ” Potter, who manages a Fountain Valley moving and storage company, recalled Debay saying over lunch. “He told me we needed to go mow a lawn or something. I said I was too busy, but that he should give me a call.”

Debay did. Several times. And a few months later, Potter was watching a televised football game on New Year’s Day and was mobilized by the image of a Florida fan painted orange and yelling slogans in the stands. “The sense I had was, ‘That’s you, bud. You’re in the stands, but the battle is in the field. It’s time to get into the battle.’ ”

The two men -- along with anywhere from two to 115 volunteers -- have spent at least one Saturday every month since doing battle by performing good deeds, usually manual labor.

They take their name from a Bible passage in which Jesus, asked how to get into heaven, tells the story of the good Samaritan who tended a destitute man in the street, then advises disciples to “Go and do likewise.”

In addition to laying new flooring and repairing broken roofs, the group has painted houses, pulled weeds, trimmed trees, hauled away trash, installed sprinkler systems, repaired gazebos, and once -- at the behest of Fountain Valley -- removed the graffiti from 1,400 feet of freeway wall.

The volunteers pay for materials.

Deciding which projects to pursue, Potter said, “depends on the vibes. You sense whether it’s something the Lord wants us to do and, if it is, then we start the process and it all works out.”

As word of his group’s good deeds has spread, Potter said, there has been no shortage of requests for their services from churches, cities, nonprofit organizations and, occasionally, needy individuals.

“I don’t remember someone asking for help and being turned down,” he said, “though I do remember times when it wasn’t accepted.” That wasn’t the case at Sahli’s house, where the recent flooring project assumed the air of a party.

“It’s a great way to meet people and go out and do good,” said Bob Foy, 48, who began volunteering after Potter spoke at his church.

Said Sahli: “This is huge. It’s awesome. These guys are a blessing from the Lord.”