Gov. Chris Gregoire hailed four North Olympic Peninsula volunteers at her mansion Monday and sent them off to Seattle for another celebration.
The unpaid workers, who come from Sequim, Port Angeles and Port Hadlock, will have their names and faces on the big screen at Safeco Field when the Mariners play the Tampa Bay Rays tonight.
Steve Rankin of Sequim, who works with Streamkeepers of Clallam County; Louise Barcelou, of Port Hadlock, with the Retired Senior Volunteer Program of Jefferson and Clallam counties; Mary Meech of Port Angeles’ Dream Center; and Fernellyn Brown, a Sequim Police Department volunteer, received the Governor’s Outstanding Volunteer Service Award in a ceremony Monday.
The honor includes no monetary prize — there’s a certificate and a paperweight — but the Peninsula four, with 49 other recipients from around Washington state, were treated to tickets to the Mariners game that begins at 7 p.m.
“Their pictures will be up on the video board and their names will be in lights,” said awards organizer Denise Berns.
The four honorees work in vastly different fields of endeavor, but they hold in common one driving force: passion and the urge to devote their time.
• Rankin, a 62-year-old retired computer consultant and Coast Guard sailor, has become a stormwater stalker, working on the front lines for Clallam County and the Environmental Protection Agency.
With a $538,000 grant from the EPA, the county is in the process of designing a stormwater plan: a blueprint for protecting the Strait of Juan de Fuca and other Clallam waters from the polluting effects of runoff.
Of course, the county first needs data on what’s in the runoff, and that is where Rankin and Streamkeepers, Clallam’s decade-old water quality monitoring program, come in.
Rankin has volunteered with Streamkeepers since 2003.
In the past year alone, he’s logged 600 unpaid hours — equivalent to15 weeks of full-time work — many of them in the wee hours and off the beaten track. He’s walked many a mucky trail and pulled manhole covers away with his pickup and winch, just to get at that storm water.
He’s a kind of environmentalist mailman, braving rain, mud, cold and dead of night, said Ed Chadd, Streamkeepers’ co-manager who nominated Rankin for the state award.
Rankin has turned his home into a Streamkeepers operations center, with his laundry room as the laboratory. His wife, C.J., is fine with it all. She too is a volunteer, helping to rehabilitate eagles, hawks and owls at the Northwest Raptor Center in Sequim. Wildlife, waterways — of course they’re connected, said C.J. “Everything we do affects everything else.”
The Rankins marked their 25th wedding anniversary on Jan. 20 by inviting a team of fellow Streamkeepers over to watch President Barack Obama’s inauguration and have some cake. Then they headed out across Sequim to gather stormwater samples.
• Louise Barcelou, 86, has volunteered at the Tri-Area Food Bank in Chimacum for more than 20 years, said Bob Logue, director of the Retired and Senior Volunteer Program, which operates through Olympic Community Action Programs.
Barcelou not only picks up surplus goods at grocery stores and helps out in service lines, but also adds personal touches to make clients feel welcome, said Logue, who nominated Barcelou for the award.
“She makes a point of having a little basket of kids’ toys and gifts — which she purchases with her own money — to see that every kid gets something every time they come” to the food bank, he said.
She dispenses hugs “to anyone she meets . . . She is just a delightful person. She’s got a personality that is like sunshine.”
Barcelou also is self-reliant.
“She will pack up all these heavy boxes, and you offer to give her help, and she says, ‘No, I can handle it myself,'” Logue said.
Barcelou was not available for comment.
“She just helps out wherever she can,” Logue said. “This is her way of giving back.”
• Mary Meech of Port Angeles was a Dream Center client before she became one of its most active advocates.
“We made her the first official peer volunteer,” said Alona Kaeller, lead case worker at the Dream Center at 535 E. First St. in Port Angeles.
The 19-year-old developmentally disabled woman was living with her parents when she came to the Dream Center for help in finding ways to become more independent.
The Dream Center is a drop-in center for homeless and at-risk youth that provides basic needs — meals, showers, clothes — as well as case management to help young people improve their situations.
After achieving the goal of moving into her own apartment through help from at the Dream Center, Meech, who said she was shy at first, “naturally went into the role, always asking if we needed help,” Kaeller said.
“In times when we were short of staff, she would volunteer to take on those duties, like serving food.”
Meech helped at outreach events, bringing people to the Dream Center booth, assisting at a health fair and washing emergency vehicles at a car wash put on by the center.
“She really understands what we do here and who we’re trying to pull in to get services,” Kaeller said.
“She does it on her own.”
“I am really shocked about the award,” Meech said. “I just like to help people.”
Meech, who is seeking work now, dreams of working with special-needs children. She hopes to train in early childhood education.
Meech stands out, Kaeller said, because “her heart is very big. She’s very capable. Despite her own disabilities, she offers a lot to those who come to the Dream Center.
“She has her own barriers and own struggles, and she’s able to overcome those and reach out to others.”
• Fernellyn Brown, 64, a registered nurse retired from the Clallam County Health Department, helps parents keep their children safely restrained in car seats.
For the past two years, Brown has been the Sequim Police Department’s member of the Peninsula Child Passenger Safety Team, a coalition of volunteers from the Port Angeles Fire Department, the Forks and Port Angeles offices of the Clallam County Health Department, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office and others.
The team — often using a Sequim Police Department van — inspects and, at times, replaces child car seats from Forks to Port Townsend.
“If you see the van pulling the trailer, I’m more than likely behind the wheel,” Brown said.
In the trailer, the volunteers carry equipment for setting up inspection stations, where they inspect child seats for free.
The group also has a limited number of car seats to give away and has loaners available for grandchild visits.
“It’s so important that children be fastened safely in cars in case there are accidents,” said Maris Turner, the Sequim Police Department crime prevention-public information officer who nominated Brown.
Turner said that Brown’s “outreach from Sequim has been amazing.
“Within a short amount of time, we had a huge desire for the program. She was putting in a lot of time to get those seats out” and worked a total of 243 hours in 2008.
Brown is one of 20 “exceptional volunteers” at the police department, Turner said.
“It’s a personal program for her that reaches out into the community.”
“It’s very humbling to think you can get an award for something you think just should be done,” Brown said.
“Sometimes, a thank-you goes a long ways.”
For more information on the car-seat program — which is funded by donations from service clubs, businesses and individuals — phone 360-683-7227.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
Managing Editor Leah Leach can be reached at 360-417-3531 or leah.leach@peninsuladailynews.com.
