ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, January 22, 1996 TAG: 9601220080
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
WITH VOLUNTEERS AND funds in short supply, there are times when nobody is available at the crisis center to answer a cry for help.
TRUST was born in 1970, when drug abuse hit heavy in the Roanoke Valley, particularly among young people.
Its founders - Hollins College students and staff - sought to counter the growing drug culture with a 24-hour counseling and crisis center. Known then as TRUST, the Roanoke Valley Student Trouble Center, it was an interim source of help for young people in a community that lacked drug-focused crisis intervention services.
In a small house on Hershberger Road in Northwest Roanoke, volunteers worked a 24-hour hot line, taking calls from young people who could talk anonymously - not only about drugs, but also birth control, the draft, relationships and psychological problems. A room with subdued lighting was set aside for people riding out bad drug trips.
TRUST's first year was chronicled in Roanoke newspapers. Ms. magazine mentioned the organization in a feature on rape crisis centers.
In 25 years, little about TRUST has changed - aside from two relocations, one of which raised the ire of an entire neighborhood.
The zany fund-raisers continue. Stranded travelers wander in and out of its emergency shelter. People call the hot line with the same troubles as two decades ago. They want off drugs. They want to leave home. They want to kill themselves.
But from its original mission of counseling young people in trouble, TRUST has evolved into a full crisis operation. Hot-line callers are no longer solely college-age students; they include young teens and senior citizens now. The problems are more diverse. Runaways share shelter space with homeless families.
TRUST has become more mainstream, said Salem lawyer Ellen Weinman, one of TRUST's original volunteers who continued to work with the organization until a year ago.
But lately, survival has not been easy.
TRUST weathered 1995 without money from its annual fund-raising event because of administration changes. And TRUST's volunteer staff has thinned to where the organization has stopped billing itself as a "24-hour" service.
"Our volunteer staff agreed that until we got up and running again, we not refer to ourselves as `24 hours,''' said Janice Dinkins, TRUST executive director. "It's still in our mission statement. It's still our intention."
Stuart Israel, known for his elaborate fund-raising stunts, left in January after eight years as executive director. A successor was appointed in April but left in November for personal reasons, Dinkins said.
As a result, the organization's 1995 fund-raiser - planned as a follow-up to the 1994 "TRUST 500,'' featuring NASCAR drivers and their cars - "never got off the ground," Dinkins said. Its absence left a hole in the organization's budget. The "TRUST 500'' raised $15,000.
TRUST is operating in the 1995-96 fiscal year with a budget of $148,658, about 40 percent of it United Way of Roanoke Valley dollars. Other funding sources include Total Action Against Poverty; Blue Ridge Community Services in Roanoke; and the Roanoke, Roanoke County and Salem governments.
TRUST has cut expenses where possible, Dinkins said. An associate director, for example, wasn't replaced when she left last year.
"We're not in any danger of going under," she said. But the fund-raisers "were pretty significant to our budget."
Two fund-raisers have been planned for this year. The 1996 TRUST NASCAR Show will be held April 19 at Roanoke's Victory Stadium. A human tug-of-war with a jet plane may be held in August. (Boeing 747 or Lear not yet determined.)
Dinkins maintains that services have not been affected by the financial crunch.
The organization continues to provide emergency shelter at TRUST House, a refurbished dwelling at 404 Elm Ave. in Old Southwest. The house - also operation central for TRUST's hot line and Teenline, a peer counseling service staffed by trained high school students - can shelter up to 15 people.
Clients vary - from a family with three children, two dogs and a cat whose house was destroyed by fire, to a teen-age girl from Florida whose boyfriend abandoned her in Roanoke.
TRUST has never turned away a dollar, with the possible exception of 23 years ago when a $12,750 check was mistakenly mailed to the TRUST office and promptly returned to sender. But what TRUST needs more of is volunteers, Dinkins said.
The organization routinely solicits volunteers. For about three years, however, response has been lagging. As a result, callers who dial the 344-1948 hot line are, at various times between 8 a.m. and midnight or later, greeted with a phone recording that refers them to the emergency outreach number of Blue Ridge Community Services in Roanoke.
TRUST has about 40 volunteers but needs 20 more, Dinkins said.
"Last year, we were not a 24-hour service. Prior to that, we were,' said Dick Hawkins, a volunteer who has worked the Thursday 7:30 p.m.-to-midnight hot line for 15 years. ``It was probably a couple of years ago that we started to have some open shifts."
The slump is not a first. In 1978, TRUST had so few volunteers that it dropped the 24-hour billing. And as now, a recorded message referred callers to another agency.
Trained volunteer "lay counselors" work a minimum of one 4- to 5-hour hot-line shift a week. It can be tough work, listening to people's problems, resisting the temptation to advise.
"We don't give advice. We're more of a listening service," Hawkins said.
"We try to help [callers] identify what the problem is, what's really bothering them. Then we try to help them explore their options," said Hawkins, who is executive director of the Roanoke Valley Speech & Hearing Center. "It may not be the option that we would have chosen. But we don't choose for them."
Hawkins said he is confident TRUST will pull itself out of the current slump. The organization provides a service that is too valuable to lose, he said.
"A lot of people don't have someone they can sit down with who will listen and be empathic," Hawkins said.
Sometimes people just need someone to listen to them, he said. Or sometimes, they just need somewhere to go when they have nowhere to go.
TRUST "not only provides a service for people who need it, but it's also satisfying to me to know I was there for someone."
TRUST will hold a volunteer training session over two weekends, Feb. 16-18 and Feb. 23-25. For more information on volunteering, call Janice Dinkins or Monica Poff at 776-3550.
LENGTH: Long : 120 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ROGER HART/Staff. Janice Dinkins says the agency'sby CNBservices, such as this emergency shelter, are in no danger of being
lost. color.