August 2019 – Stories from the American Red Cross of Alabama and Mississippi

Carol receives her “Volunteer of the Month” certificate at Montgomery chapter office.

Carol Stafford began her Red Cross story after retiring from a 28-year career with the Alabama Department of Corrections. During her career, Carol also drove a school bus for Macon County Schools. Anyone close to Carol would describe her as being dedicated but that would be an understatement. Since 2016, Carol has touched the lives of military members and their families through her role in Service to Armed Forces (SAF), responded countless times to local disasters like home fires and has become an integral part of the Home Fire Campaign due to her certification in American Sign Language (ASL).

Carol uses her communication skills to focus on educating hearing-impaired individuals about the dangers of home fires and how they can stay safe with a bed-shaker alarm system. When asked why she chooses to volunteer, Carol stated, “I love meeting and helping people”. Bed-shaker alarms are given to hearing-impaired or elderly individuals who would otherwise not hear the typical system in case of an emergency. Often, Carol must seek these individuals and/or families out. Carol added “having Megan [intern from Alabama State University] with me has been a big help.”

If Carol isn’t working on a Red Cross mission, you can find her in the company of her daughter, Mishika and grandson, Terrell (13). Carol is 54 years old and resides in Shorter, Alabama. Thank you for all that you do, Carol!

Welcome to the Red Cross of Alabama

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.
— Oscar Wilde.

We may be a bit biased, but we’re going to say it anyway… the Alabama Region is blessed to have some of the most selfless and dedicated volunteers in the organization. Here in Alabama, our volunteers are different, not in a bad way but just, er, different, let me explain. In Alabama, generally speaking, we like our air conditioning, we love our fried foods washed down with some sweet tea and we can’t simply can’t live without college football (Roll Eagle)! But there’s just something else that makes us unique and that is the way that we encourage and celebrate our own. We take pride in our state and the people in it and the majority of us would give the shirts off of our backs to help a neighbor in need. So it makes perfect sense that when these same people volunteer with an organization that is built upon the same principles and voila, you get a match made in heaven.

For more than 135 years, our mission has been to help individuals and families prevent, prepare for and respond to emergencies. The Red Cross provides disaster relief assistance to those affected by natural and human-caused disasters. Every day volunteers are working in our communities and helping their neighbors. In Alabama alone, there are over 2,000 active volunteers providing life-changing and often life-saving services. The Red Cross is not a government agency; it relies
on generous donations of time, money and blood to
provide its services to the community. We are proud that an average of 90 cents of every dollar the Red Cross spends is invested into programs meant to better the community.
I’d bet you didn’t know that the Red Cross can be categorized into five unique services? Helping people and communities affected by disasters, supporting the military and its families, teaching life-saving skills, collecting, testing and distributing blood products throughout the nation and partnering with international services to alleviate human suffering worldwide. Ask anyone associated and they will tell you that the Red Cross is a family. No matter if you volunteer for one event each year or you are a staple volunteer that everyone knows, you are a part of this special family of “Red Crossers”.

We are proud that our volunteers represent the community, have diverse and unique backgrounds, speak many different languages, are of all different ages and represent various ethnicities. We invite you to join our family and help make the Alabama Red Cross even stronger.