Volunteering

Our daughter and her friend, Emily, were co-chairs of this year's Komen Race for the Cure that was held on Saturday, May 12.  We definitely got our eyes opened as to what a major undertaking it is and all that is involved for just a one-day event.  Komen has five paid staff members in the Sacramento affiliate office that serves 19 counties.  Three of the staff were on-site at Arden Fair Mall for the seven days of open registration.  Needless to say, they needed a lot (hundreds) of volunteers to help pull this labor intensive event together.  

The decorations for the mall were done very nicely and the location was right in front of Nordstroms.  I was amazed at the traffic going in and out of the store (not that I had a lot of time to take notice lol).

We got a call Friday night asking if we could come over to lend a hand for a couple of hours. Sure, not a problem.  Then I was asked to show up Monday at 9:30 a.m. and to bring my laptop as I would be doing data entry.  So from about 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. I entered race registrations.  This was repeated on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.  As I had been cleared to handle money, I was put on the Registration Table where in between data entry I accepted registrations and donations.  It was a very busy day.  Friday night everything had to be torn down and moved over to Cal Expo (location of the race).  While I was having my fun, John's efforts started on Wednesday with working on decorations (stringing records) and then on Thursday and Friday, putting 2,000 folding chairs in place and zip-tying them together. 

Seeing the transformation from Wednesday to Friday night was amazing.  The place looked great but there was much more to do.  Melissa and crew worked into the wee hours making final preparations, but we called it quits at 8:30 as we had to be up at 4 a.m.; to early for retired folks!

Saturday morning, John went one way and I another.  I helped with some setting up and then manned my post at the Solutions Table.  My reward for having gotten proficient on Komen's software lol.

While I was working, John was rewarded for all his hard work (and possibly for being the father of one of the co-chairs lol).  John got to drive the pace car (brand new convertible Mustang) for the actual 5K race.  Darn, I was suppose to ride shotgun but that didn't work out (see above) :(  John, however, had a great time!

John's view of the Start

Here are some of the decorations in the Expo (notice strung records that were mentioned earlier).

Here is a picture of Melissa, Emily, KCRA's Edie Lambert, and Chris Hollingsworth on stage.

Congrats to all who so dedicatedly worked on making this year's Race for the Cure a success!!!!  John and I have a new appreciation of what it takes to pull off an event like this. While we enjoyed all that we did and the sense of purpose that came from volunteering (plus we each got a T shirt), we will be far away from Sacramento next year at this time :)