Woman honored with state award
Published 1:30 am Monday, May 11, 2026
SEQUIM — Donna Stoffel, Considered a “Renaissance woman” and outstanding team leader by fellow volunteers, received a state Volunteer Service Award in the Peninsula/Coastal region through Serve Washington.
Stoffel, of Blyn, was honored April 21 by Clallam County Fire District 3 commissioners with a proclamation.
Stoffel said volunteering is her way of “giving back to the community that’s been so good to us.”
“It also means I can be an active participant if there’s ever a disaster,” she said.
In the past year, Stoffel, Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) 3 co-captain, provided hundreds of volunteer hours. She led Sequim’s third annual Safety Fair with 32 public service groups, 60 volunteers and more than 1,000 visitors at the Guy Cole Event Center.
She also led CERT volunteers’ traffic and parking support at the Soroptimist’s Garden Show, and she crafted and delivered Clallam County’s annual aircraft ground safety training for Clallam’s Disaster Airlift Response Team (DART) ground support personnel attached to three local airfields.
Stoffel also organizes and trains her 30-member response team monthly.
Stoffel got her start serving the community right before the COVID-19 pandemic. She moved to the Blyn area in 2019 and went through CERT’s academy in January 2020.
She went on to support CERT’s efforts to support food, vaccine and personal protective equipment (PPE) distribution.
“It was interesting,” she said of the early days of the pandemic.
“We were the last academy class to graduate for a while.”
As for the formation of the Safety Fair, she said it was a brain child of CERT captains to better educate the community. Its first year, it had a number of agencies and a few speakers, Stoffel said, and now it’s outgrown the Guy Cole Event Center and features a number of touch-a-trucks and more vendors outside.
This year’s event is set for Oct. 3 at the same location with more vehicles, speakers and demonstrations with hopes to have two helicopters on scene.
Stoffel, originally from Colorado, said her grandfather, father, brother and nephew all were volunteer firefighters.
“I knew I’d never be a firefighter, but CERT appealed to me,” she said. “It’s something I could do with my abilities.”
Charles Meyer, a fellow CERT member, nominated her for the award. He wrote in his application that “(Stoffel’s) commitment to volunteerism is evident in her proven desire to help others.”
“Her dedication to emergency response activities is focused on being of service during some future disaster in order to save lives, reassure and comfort the fearful, and provide material aid to our most vulnerable citizens in times of crisis,” Meyer wrote. “She has chosen to pursue the greater good for the greatest number.”
He added that her commitment to volunteerism is evident in her desire to help others.
“She has chosen to pursue the greater good for the greatest number, because it really matters,” Meyer wrote.
According to fire district documents, the state Volunteer Service Awards recognize and honor “the multitude of acts of kindness demonstrated by individuals, families and service groups in communities throughout Washington.”
Stoffel said when disaster strikes, it’s important to help at least one person.
“If they help one person, then that’s one more person who will survive and thrive in a disaster,” she said.
________
Matthew Nash is a reporter with the Olympic Peninsula News Group, which is composed of Sound Publishing newspapers Peninsula Daily News, Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum. He can be reached by email at matthew.nash@sequimgazette.com.
