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Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Orange County Volunteers Reflect on Why They Are Serving Their Community

JULIE LEOPO, Voice of OC

A volunteer carries a bag of potatoes at a drive through food pantry at Santa Ana College on April 12, 2020.

By Hosam Elattar | January 18, 2021
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For years now Martin Luther King, Jr.  Day has been recognized nationally as a day of service in honor of a civil rights leader who defined greatness as serving others in the community.

For many here in Orange County, the global pandemic has allowed many residents and people who volunteer in the county to really live out that message.

Throughout the past year, people have repeatedly stepped up to help out each other, even risking being infected by the virus and potentially spreading it to a loved one.

Meet some of those residents that have spent the past year serving their community during the Coronavirus pandemic.

Yuri Williams

Orange County Deputy Juvenile Correctional Officer Yuri Williams has gone around the country twice to help people in need.

Orange County Deputy Juvenile Correctional Officer Yuri Williams put on a mask way before the pandemic gripped life in the county back in March last year.

Williams dresses up as superheroes and visits low income families, the elderly, veterans, homeless people as well as adults and children with illnesses. He hands out food, clothes and toys.

“As a kid, I always looked up to superheroes. They wear a mask and they’re doing good deeds and saving the world and whatnot and you don’t know who’s underneath that mask and that’s how I feel,” Williams said. “You don’t see people dressed up coming to help that often so they’re caught off guard and then they laugh and giggle and then that’s when I’m able to dig in and see if I can help you.”

Williams said his inspiration to help was his mother – his favorite superhero – who he lost to cancer in 2009. 

“I started out here serving the houseless out in the riverbed, and over there by the annex a couple years ago, and I just had to do something to keep my mind from thinking about my mom all the time,” he said.

Williams started his own nonprofit called A Future Superhero and Friends where he continues to serve communities and has gone around 50 states twice helping out. He is a Long Beach resident but he does outreach with homeless individuals in the county.

Williams dresses up as superheroes when he is out helping the community.

While the pandemic has stopped Williams from visiting hospitals and the elderly, he still visits the homeless people maintaining his distance and wearing a mask.

“I wear this cape so I can’t sit back and not help people,” Williams said. “There’s no greater gift than giving back … that feeling of just giving back every time it just makes me want to keep doing it and doing it.”

Lorraine Ghent

New Yorker turned Irvine resident Lorraine Ghent had been volunteering for years with a couple of organizations in Orange County like the Second Harvest Food Bank before the pandemic hit.

Even the pandemic affected where she could serve that didn’t stop her from a new place to volunteer. 

Volunteer Lorraine Ghent helps out at the Working Wardrobe’s donation center in Irvine.

Ghent has been helping out Working Wardrobes, a nonprofit that helps people get jobs and provides professional outfits for people on job interviews, where she collects clothes being donated

“People drive up and I ask them if they’re donating and I get a rack for them and help them put the clothes on the rack,” she said.

Because of the pandemic, Working Wardrobes have taken their work outside as a safety precaution as well as wearing masks, gloves and social distancing. 

Ghent said because the work is being done outside she feels safe.

“It’s just good to give back, it makes you feel good,” Ghent said. “I think that’s my basic thing – is to always help people.”

Esteban Jimenez

Esteban Jimenez grew up in Garden Grove down the street from Disneyland where he worked as a main entrance supervisor before he was furloughed due to the pandemic.

Jimenez started to volunteer around September with the Community Action Partnership of Orange County at their family resource center called Anaheim Independencia where he helped distribute food to people in need. 

Esteban Jimenez, a furloughed Disneyland employee, helped distribute food at a family resource center in Anaheim.

“I wanted to give back to my community in one way or another,” Jimenez said.

He said he heard about an opportunity to volunteer from a friend working at the resource center – a place where Jimenez’s grandma used to go to play Loteria and pass the time before she passed away.

“It just meant a whole lot more to me to to know that I was going to be volunteering at a place where my grandmother used to spend lots of time and a place where I have many memories with her that I would go and pick her up and see her smiling after having such a great time there,” Jimenez said.

He stopped in mid-December due to a coronavirus scare at the resource center. Jimenez said there was a fear of catching the virus but knowing there were people more vulnerable to the virus than him  in need of support kept him going. 

“People just don’t have that privilege to be going out and risking it so I just always thought about them, and I said you know what I just I have to go out there and do this, it’ll be for them. I will be extra safe. I’ll carry extra hand sanitizer. I’ll make sure to wear gloves and a mask,” Jimenez said.

Yasmin Jivraj

Yasmin Jivraj has been volunteering with Uplift Charity’s monthly food distributions at the Al Ansar mosque in Anaheim every month during the pandemic. 

Jivraj heads the monthly distributions and added that volunteering during the pandemic has been a little bit stressful.

“I’m still very passionate about serving the community. It makes a big difference to the people around knowing that they’re not alone, we’re all with them,” Jivraj said. 

Yasmin Jivraj head’s Uplift Charity’s monthly food distribution at a mosque in Anaheim.

Uplift Charity is a Muslim non-profit that works to help those in need become self sufficient. Jivraj got involved with the nonprofit after reading about them on Facebook.

Jivraj said since the pandemic the number of people volunteering has gone down.

“Sometimes we feel like we’re behind the 10th hour but we manage. We have a strong internal team,” she said

Jivraj said anyone who is hesitant to volunteer right now should keep their faith up and that if they do choose to volunteer they must take the necessary precautions.

“It strengthens our community. You learn a lot about what people are going through. I’m a little more empathetic,” Jivraj said.

Tara Hitchcock

South County Resident Tara Hitchcock has been volunteering through Americorps at Grandma’s House of Hope, a nonprofit that works to provide housing for homeless people and has a food distribution program at schools called Nana’s Kids.

“I think with COVID-19, our shift was more towards now people that were volunteers and now those people that helped us, they were the people in need,” Hitchcock said. “We really shifted our focus in the Nana’s Kids program by providing food to those families that were food insecure and these are families that were recently laid off, that couldn’t go to work all of a sudden due to this pandemic.”

South County resident Tara Hitchcock worked with Grandma’s House of Hope to provide food to families in need during the pandemic.

Hitchcock got involved before the pandemic having felt a need to help out locally and not wanting to ignore the people struggling in Orange County.

“I had the privilege of living in an area like Laguna Niguel, Dana Point where that got kind of ignored,” Hitchcock said. “You hear about people protesting against a homeless shelter wanting to be built in Irvine, you just hear these things and it’s just it really broke my heart in that sense.”

Hitchcock worked for months during the pandemic with the food program getting paid a stipend for her efforts through Americorps- a domestic version of the Peace Corps. Now she works as service coordinator for Grandma’s House of Hope.

Hitchcock said being able to provide direct assistance to people in need was amazing.

“Just seeing that person to person interaction, even with a mask while socially distancing, I think that is extremely rewarding,” she said.

Celeste Webb

17-year-old Northwood High Senior Celeste Webb has been volunteering with the Zero Waste Initiative since July last year.

“I started volunteering in the middle of COVID and I was kind of getting a lot of cabin fever. I felt like I wasn’t really doing much with my life and I was just kind of sitting here,” Webb said. 

Irvine high school student Celeste Webb helps pick up bagels for the Zero Waste Initiative, which donates the bagels to organizations that feed people in need.

The initiative started by an Irvine high school student takes the uneaten bagels from cafes and bagel shops to organizations in the county that feed people in need.  They have rescued $90,000 worth of food.

Webb helps the initiative get the bagels they need from the businesses they’ve partnered with.

“I have time and I’m personally not really struggling in this, I’m really well off. But the thing is, I know that a lot of people have been really heavily impacted by this,” Webb said. “Volunteering doesn’t have to be anything huge. It could be something as simple as driving around picking up bagels so even a little bit will do a lot of help.”

Dr. Anita Wang

It’s not just volunteers who are stepping up during the pandemic. Countless doctors, nurses and medical professionals have been on the frontline for almost a year now putting their own health and their families health on the line.

One of them is Dr. Anita Wang who is not a volunteer but has been working at South Coast Global Medical Center Emergency room and other hospitals as well as working at the overflow tents that have been setup.

Dr. Anita Wang has been on the frontlines of the pandemic serving the community through two waves of the virus.

Wang said being on the frontlines of the pandemic has been very, very difficult.

“It just takes a toll on you,” Wang said. “You go into a deep, deep abyss, and you just don’t see that there’s a way out of it, because they keep coming in.”

Wang has worked during the first and second waves of the virus in the county. To deal with the toll of seeing families lose loved ones and patients not being allowed to be with their families before they die, she has decided to take a step back and work less hours.

“It’s been very difficult because I’ve always been the one to jump into the emergency. I’m the one that wants to run and be there to help,” Wang said. “My mother will be 90. My boys are 14 and they see it on the news. They’re concerned for me they don’t want me to get exposed. They know that I am a high risk.”

Wang said when she sees a medical need her heart just pulls her to help.

“I thought that had died in the first round. I thought I was spent,” Wang said. “And then I got the call to help out again and this part was there and I thought oh, it’s not dead. It’s still there. I just need to scale back.”

OneOC 

The county’s main volunteer agency, OneOC will be holding a virtual dinner today at 5 p.m. in collaboration with the Orange County Food Bank featuring special guests to discuss issues impacting County residents. People can register to intend online.

“Think of it as kind of the Sunday supper style where we’ll really allow folks to kind of engage in conversation around living the values of Martin Luther King Jr. and why this day is important,” said Amanda Green, public information officer for the emergency volunteer center, which was activated last year at the start of the pandemic.

Green said since the start of the pandemic they’ve mobilized over 4,400 volunteers.

The Emergency Volunteer Center put out an urgent request earlier this month calling for medically trained and general support volunteers to help out with the distribution of the vaccine.

“We have over 1,500 people already pre-registered to be ready to be contacted when their services are needed,” Green said. “We anticipate getting many, many, many more volunteers that are needed to participate in those efforts.”

Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC Reporting Fellow. Contact him @[email protected] or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.

How can I sign up for a vaccine?

For full details on the COVID-19 vaccine in Orange County view our Voice of OC vaccine page that is constantly updated and has links of where to register for an appointment: http://bit.ly/occovidvaccine.

What is COVID-19? Do I have it?

INFORMATION View the CDC website. View OC's website. View the latest OC case counts.

TRANSLATIONS See the county's guides in non-English languages. Learn key Coronavirus facts in Vietnamese and Spanish via VietRise. See VietRISE guides in Spanish and Vietnamese.

PROTECTION To limit exposure, the CDC recommends: wash your hands often, avoid close contact with others, cover your mouth and nose with a cloth mask when around others, cover coughs and sneezes, clean and disinfect frequently touched surfaces.

SYMPTOMS The CDC identifies these key symptoms that can occur any time between 2 and 14 days after exposure: Fever or chills, cough and shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, fatigue, muscle or body aches,  headache, new loss of taste or smell, sore throat, congestion or runny nose, nausea or vomiting or diarrhea. If you suspect Coronavirus, CALL your primary medical provider.

EMERGENCY SYMPTOMS If you display any of the following emergency warning signs, seek immediate medical attention: difficulty breathing or shortness of breath, persistent pain or pressure in the chest, new confusion or inability to arouse, or bluish lips or face.

RISK The CDC identifies people most at risk for serious illness: Older adults, and people who have serious chronic medical conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and lung disease.

What is open?

RESIDENTS The County of Orange offers a list of notices and news on what guidance is given for families and persons.

SCHOOLS The latest information for the county is available from the Orange County Board of Education.

STATE GUIDE TO WHAT IS OPEN A full list of statewide guidelines for what is open and what is closed.

SOCIAL DISTANCING Staying away from other people is called "social distancing." The aim is to SLOW the spread of Coronavirus so as to not overwhelm the nation's health care systems and so that people in need can get help. The Washington Post explains: "The spread (of COVID-19) can be slowed, public health professionals say, if people practice "social distancing" by avoiding public spaces and generally limiting their movement."

What support is available?

STRESS & ANXIETY Stress and anxiety can be triggered by the situation and resources are available to help from the Anxiety and Depression Association of America and from the American Psychology Association. Concern over this new virus can make children and families anxious, here are tips on talking with children about COVID-19.

MENTAL HEALTH The County of Orange offers a list of available mental health support services.

FIRST RESPONDERS The County of Orange offers these support services for first responders and health care workers.

BUSINESSES & ORGANIZATIONS The County of Orange offers a list of up-to-date guidelines for business and faith-based/community organizations.

FOOD ASSISTANCE Voice of OC offers a weekly list of available food pantries in Orange County. You can also apply for food benefits over the phone through the CalFresh program at 800-281-9799 or online.

PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION Buses and trains still offer service, but routes have been reduced so make sure to check your route ahead of time.

HOMELESSNESS The County of Orange offers a list of available shelter beds and other resources.

GENERAL FINANCIAL HELP Here are some services:

  •   • Find information on unemployment and disability benefits.
  •   • The Orange County Social Services Agency, despite closing its lobby, is processing online filings for assistance programs. This includes emergency cash assistance for immediate needs like rent or medical bills. The phone line has averaged a 30 minute wait time and offers a callback service, but people are encouraged to apply for benefits online.
  •   • Residents can apply for any of these programs by calling 800-281-9799.

RESTAURANT OWNERS & EMPLOYEES You can find a detailed list of resources available to restaurant owners and employees

How can I help?

VOLUNTEERING A statewide guide offers examples of ways to volunteer safely during Coronavirus. Options include, but are not limited to: donating plasma, making cloth face masks and supporting local food banks. Orange County's Second Harvest Food Bank lists support options online.

DONATIONS An Orange County Community Resilience Fund has been started through the OC Community Foundation to raise money for local nonprofits and volunteer organizations.

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  • Top Stories
  • A Future Superhero and Friends
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  • Martin Luther King Jr. Day
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  • The Zero Waste Initiative
  • Uplift Charity
  • Volunteers
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  • Orange County Residents Make A Difference This Year Helping Feed Neighbors in Need

    Countless Orange County residents have stepped up to volunteer at local food distributions during the Coronavirus pandemic.

  • How to Volunteer During The Coronavirus Pandemic

    OneOC is managing Orange County’s Emergency Volunteer Center to support emergency response officials by directing those in the County who wish to help out to community based organizations in need of support. 

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