My First Work Day Experience

Extreme Community Makeover couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day as we embarked upon our third Work Day of the year.  The day included volunteers from Beta Alpha Psi at the University of Colorado Denver and Chaparral High School Boy’s Lacrosse team.  This being my first Work Day in my first year of volunteering for ECM, I was impressed with the energy amongst our volunteers, especially the young gentlemen from Chaparral High School.  Even though many of them had prom on their minds, scheduled for later that evening, they dove into their work with gusto, focus, and great attitudes.  Truly, it was a pleasure to observe these young people working to help better our communities. 

I was also fortunate to share my first Work Day experience with fellow Extreme Team and second year returning volunteer - Courtney.  Her assigned position is the Fundraising Team, but she answered the call to be photographer for the day, as our regular photographer was laid up with an injury.  We decided to join forces and drove from site to site together to gather stories and photos of our volunteers and residents.  Teaming up with Courtney gave me the additional experience and appreciation of witnessing the compassionate, hardworking and kind people working for ECM.  Not only did I find kindness and people with a serving attitude within ECM volunteers, but this personality trait was also evident in the residents in Villa Park and the surrounding neighborhoods. 

High school sweethearts, Ted and Linda, met and grew up in the same neighborhood they are now living in. Residents for 30 years, they have both seen many people come and go throughout the years and have watched the neighborhood go through many transitions. Ted shared stories of how he and his neighbors look after each other.  His wife Linda commented that when Ted gets bored he will go see what the neighbors are up to. Ted and Linda especially love it when their Guatemalan neighbors share homemade tamales with them at Christmas time.  Although retired, Ted and Linda haven’t slowed down – at the age of 50 Ted taught himself how to play base guitar and Linda the keyboards. They formed a band with their son and a neighbor; and enjoy getting together once a week to play rock and roll tunes by Santana, The Beatles, and other bands from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s.  They play purely for pleasure, however, Ted said they did get to play at a bar once.  He said the experience was wonderful, but the one time was enough.

Several of the other residents have similar stories of growing up in the neighborhood and returning to raise their own families.  One resident - Sally, has lived in the same house for 62 years, and Charles and Loretta 40 plus years.  Dorie has been in her home since 1962 and shared that her neighbors check in on her and bring over food when she is not feeling well. They all concur that they keep in touch with their neighbors and they all look out for each other.

Carrying on the tradition of community and neighborhood involvement; the youngest resident that day was Rose. She and her husband recently bought their home from a long time resident.  Rose is glad to belong to the neighborhood, and excited to update their home and make it their own.  She feels it is important to get out and meet neighbors and to stay informed as to what is going on in her community.  Rose told me that she frequently visited website like www.nextdoor.com and www.everyblock.com to keep up on the news and to research suggestions on how to keep one’s neighborhood more peaceful and harmonious.  Rose looks forward to staying in touch with ECM to continue our work and to stay involved with the community.

I look forward to my next Work Day with ECM.  I know this experience has changed me and I am happy to be involved with such caring, and compassionate people. ECM offers many thanks to our volunteers for their time and to the residents for sharing their stories.  I am especially grateful for the opportunity to be a part of ECM, an organization that is doing their part to restore communities and help build relationships.

- Lisa, ECM Communications Team