Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 30, 1992 TAG: 9201300329
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
VOLUNTEERS `PARACHUTE INTO PEOPLE'S LIVES' AND LISTEN
It was a Monday morning at Trust, the Roanoke Valley Trouble Center, and they were saying that the phone rings a lot on Mondays."People feel problems should go away over the weekend. When the problem's still there Monday morning, it's hard to deal with it," said Stuart Israel, the center's executive director.
Trust is looking for volunteers to help answer the phone calls from troubled people on Monday and other days of the week. Calls to the center deal with AIDS, financial planning, venereal diseases, domestic disputes, battered women and other problems.
Israel said it would be nice if 24 volunteers showed up for classes that begin Feb. 21 and end May 9.
Volunteers also will help with the laundry and other chores at the Trust Center on Elm Avenue Southwest. It has 12 beds upstairs for homeless and transient people.
Kathy, a lively four-year volunteer who easily sits cross-legged on desk tops, said that the classes "are one of the most eye-opening things for some people."
Kathy - volunteers don't give their full names because they don't want callers contacting them elsewhere - said it wasn't all that easy, though.
"You'll come out of there like a dishrag when it's over," she said.
Two other volunteers, Mary and Jewel, were running the first daytime shift.
Putting up with undramatic boredom is part of the job, they said. But there also are the dramatic phone calls in which volunteers talk to someone contemplating suicide. Out of 11,483 calls last year, 148 were potential suicides.
The course is tough, Kathy said, but the volunteer's goal on the phone is simple. "Basically, what we do is just listen," she said.
And while they're listening, she said, they stay away from cliches, such as: "It is always darkest before the dawn."
Callers, she said, don't dial the Trust number to hear what your grandmother said in times of adversity.
People who use platitudes on someone who is troubled "want to be helpful, but it just doesn't work," she said.
"The idea is to get in there with somebody."
But they have to be careful, she said. If a caller says her boyfriend just walked out on her and took the stereo, the listener shouldn't say something like, "Well, what a dirty, stinking trick."
"Jumping in there and getting mad with somebody" doesn't help either, she said.
The idea, she said, is not for the listener to solve the problem, because the caller has that ability. "We're just parachuting into people's lives for a moment," she said.
Kathy said she could talk to somebody for six hours and, "I'm still not going to know them as well as they know themselves."
Stuart Israel - who will mount a billboard soon as part of a fund-raising effort - said the center has had volunteer drives routinely in the past.
But he said volunteers are needed badly now because potential Trust people are busy "trying to make ends meet" in their own lives and don't have time.
Trust was founded more than 21 years ago by faculty and students of Hollins College. The center is financed partly by the United Way of Roanoke Valley; federal, local and state governments; and by grants.
No previous experience is needed. Volunteers range in age from their 20s to their 80s. More information can be had by dialing 345-8859 or 344-1948.