As an orator, the late Martin Luther King Jr. was a spellbinding civil rights activist who continues to inspire generations. His way with words has served as the touchstone for those imbued with a belief in volunteerism, where one of the greatest gifts you can give is your time.
King often asked, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’”
It’s a question my friend Judy Amabil has readily answered by volunteering her time for a variety of good causes. The latest revolves around helping the homeless in her home base of Boulder, Colo., that has stepped up to assist those impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.
Amabile is the former co-owner of Polar Bottle, a company that manufactures all-purpose sport water bottles. She and her former husband created the company in 1994, selling it in 2018 to HydraPak.
The move allowed Amabile the opportunity to run for a state legislative seat in Colorado in the upcoming election.
Like other political candidates, Amabile has been forced to re-wire her election campaign into the virtual realm, a fact that has given her more time to spend helping others. She explained as much in a column that first appeared in The Daily Camera, the Boulder newspaper where she formerly was a member of its Editorial Advisory Board.
“During the stay-at-home order, I have been volunteering at the COVID Recovery Center at the East Boulder Recreation Center,” Amabile wrote in the column. “Citizens experiencing homelessness with symptoms of the virus can go to the center to recover and isolate. Boulder moved quickly to establish this resource and has seen relatively fewer cases among the unhoused.
“The CRC is staffed with city and county employees,” she noted. “Some are paid and some are volunteers, like me. For some staff members, this is a job, maybe the only job they could get right now. For many, it is much more: a chance to help some of our neediest citizens, to show compassion for them and the situation they are in.
“Together we serve food, do laundry, sanitize common areas, and keep the center neat and orderly. The staff is problem-solving, setting up appointments with doctors and mental health practitioners, making sure prescriptions are picked up, and helping clients connect with family and other resources. Some go out of their way to do more than required. For them, the job seems like a calling. They are good at making clients feel seen, and listening to their stories without judgment.”
For Amabile, “serving food and doing laundry have been the most meaningful,” she wrote in the column.
“The food is good and plentiful. Folding clean clothes feels caring. I’ve met people who live in a state of difficulty that is hard to comprehend. I’ve wondered, how did they get here? Where did things go wrong?”
The answers cut across the spectrum, she soon discovered. “A woman in her 40s maybe, it’s hard to tell, was relieved to be at the CRC,” Amabile recounted. “She hardly left the dorm. She wanted very little. A black coffee with four sugars. She explained that she’d started drinking again, and her family threw her out. ‘It’s my own fault that I am here, but surely it can’t be that I have to leave now with all the snow?’ She didn’t want to go. When I returned two days later, she was gone.
“A man in his 30s arrived in the middle of the night,” Amabile wrote. “He didn’t have COVID symptoms, but he was agitated and disoriented. In the morning, he had some food and a Gatorade. He took a shower. He was told he needed to leave. He fell to his knees and sobbed. He said he was suicidal. They took him to the crisis center.”
Those real-life stories, now being framed within the context of an increasingly deadly pandemic, are a sad testimony to society’s shortcomings. “Homelessness and COVID-19 are similar in that nobody chooses them, they choose you,” Amabile said. “For some, either condition is a temporary inconvenience. For others, it is a painful event that leaves you forever scarred. For still others, it is a terrifying life-and-death struggle experienced alone.
“Our society has failed to care for the least among us,” she declared. “The safety net was already full of holes. The global pandemic threatens to completely shred it at a time when more and more people will need it. I am humbled to volunteer in this small way, and more determined than ever to work on fundamental changes to a system that isn’t working.”
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