
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, September 5, 1994                   TAG: 9409080017
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

TRUST

NO TELLING how many lives may have been saved by TRUST volunteers in the past 24 years. That's the thing about crisis-intervention work. Your successes don't end up at the state's Bureau of Vital Statistics where they can be counted.

What's known, though, is that thousands of troubled people in this area turn to TRUST each year - at the rate of about 900 a month who call the TRUST hotline, and many others who walk in off the streets. Quite a few are suicidal. More are simply at the end of their rope in trying to deal with depression, loneliness, feelings of helplessness and hopelessness in strained personal relationships: parents-children, men-women, the gamut.

While other agencies also deal with such problems, TRUST is there when most agencies have closed their doors. Desperation doesn't keep office hours - and neither does the Roanoke Valley Trouble Center. It operates 24 hours a day, staffed by nonprofessional but well-trained volunteers. These are friendly, understanding listening posts, offering care and help to the desperate. The kind of folks President Bush called ``a thousand points of light.''

Currently, TRUST is several lights short of the volunteers it needs. Its situation at the moment is nearly critical. But Roanoke Valley residents, we're confident, will come through. None would want it said of this community that someone called for help, but no one answered the phone.

by CNB