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"It’s been pretty
great because since we’re friends, we tend to back each other up,” said
O'Neill, 56, of McCandless. “If we get especially big fires, if we know we’re
going to need backup, we touch base with each other. We make a pretty good
team.”
The three women aren’t just volunteers together by night. By day, the trio work
as teachers at North Allegheny Intermediate High School.
Dulemba, 48, of Ross, was the first of the group to sign on as a Red Cross
volunteer, nearly 11 years ago. O’Neill calls Dulemba an “active recruiter,”
and said she was influential in getting a group of teachers involved with the
Red Cross.
After Sept. 11, a group of about 20 teachers approached Dulemba, looking for a
way to volunteer. She set the group, including O'Neill and Stein, up with
working for the Emergency Services to Military Families, a program that helps
connect those serving in the armed forces with their families during personal
emergencies.
"It’s something easy that you can do from home,” O’Neill said.
All three women are team leaders and often call on one another to help out when
a disaster needs an extra set of hands. Even if they aren’t assigned to work a
weekend or a disaster together, they often jump in to help, Dulemba said.
“I think people are in the worst possible point in their life at that moment
and being able to give them support and help them almost process what might
come next means a lot,” Stein said. “And working together, I think we’re even a
stronger help.”
Stein was the first to transition into disaster response. She went out on a
call with Dulemba and discovered she really liked the work. During a recent
on-call weekend, Stein didn’t even leave her house - she simply handled some
problems from home.
But not all weekends are that easy. Just before Christmas, the ladies were
called to work an apartment fire in North Versailles that displaced about 100 residents.
The Red Cross opened a shelter, which Stein helped head up.
“I immediately could call Cindy and tell her to come to the shelter with me
because I needed more people,” Stein said. “You always know you have more
people that can back you up and help cover for each other.”
Stein worked 14 hours at that disaster and said it made her feel as though she
had made a difference in the lives of those affected. That’s the same attitude
that has Dulemba entering into her second decade of volunteering.
“It’s seeing the people’s faces when you help them. It’s knowing in the middle
of the night, no matter what a hardship it is for me, it’s so much more
of a hardship for those people facing the disaster,” Dulemba said.
“It would be so much easier to stay in my warm bed, but so many people don’t
have that warm bed after a disaster.”
This story was written by Daveen Rae Kurutz and
originally appeared in the North Journal and Pittsburgh Tribune
Review on February 7, 2008.
It has been reprinted here with the permission of the Pittsburgh Tribune
Review Publishing Co. |
