'Aloha' volunteers get ready to roll
By Mary Kaye Ritz
Advertiser Staff Writer
 |
| Vicky Followell, program director of Hawaii Families As Allies, has volunteered for the Great Aloha Run for 18 years. The nonprofit agency will be one of the beneficiaries of the run.
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser The Great Aloha Run 7 a.m. Feb. 16 8.15-mile route, from Aloha Tower to Aloha Stadium $20 early registration (by Dec. 5), includes T-shirt 528-7388 Affiliated events: Keiki Run and Circus Party; and Silver Streaks Senior Sunrise Walk (Feb. 14); as well as a family fitness expo (Feb. 13-15) at the Neal Blaisdell Exhibition Hall. |
That early alarm will follow a full weekend of helping out at the Great Aloha Run expo for, respectively, 12 hours on Friday, 11 hours on Saturday and a relatively restful Sunday of just 7.5 hours.
But this volunteer considers it a chance to give back.
"The rush is awesome," said the 48-year-old mother.
While the Great Aloha Run isn't for another three months, volunteers are already massing by the hundreds to launch the 8.15-mile run, which raised $240,000 last year for 29 nonprofit groups in Hawai'i. (The event costs $400,000 to $500,000 annually to put together, with a large part of the expense attributed to insurance, security, stadium rental, safety barricades and T-shirt costs.)
Organizers say volunteers like Followell are the bulwark of the event, of which The Advertiser is the founding sponsor.
"The base for the Great Aloha Run is the volunteers," said event co-founder Carole Kai. "Without volunteers putting all their time, energy and money into the event, we would have no event."
Followell knows both sides of the Great Aloha Run equation: the event side of it; and the beneficiary side.
Hers is a fascinating story, one she was willing to tell this week at the 'Aiea office of Hawaii Families as Allies, a nonprofit organization for families of children with emotional and/or behavioral challenges, which she is program director.
When her son, now grown, was just in the first grade, Followell suspected he was having trouble in class, but never expected his first-grade teacher to show up, unannounced, on her doorstep in 'Aiea.
The teacher told Followell her son's learning disabilities were beyond her scope.
"Vicky, you have an awesome young man, and you've gotta hear what I'm saying," the teacher told her. "We've got to find something for him."
Facing up to her son's learning disabilities, she started to call various programs, trying to find something that could help him. She grew more and more discouraged, realizing the cost of such programs was beyond her. At the time, she was working three jobs to make ends meet.
Then she called Variety School, one of the major recipients of Great Aloha Run money. A social worker answered the phone.
"He said 'Hello,' and all he could hear on my end was sobbing." Followell recalled, her eyes growing wet at the memory.
He quietly told her: "Why don't you come in?"
So she did.
There, in the Diamond Head school office, she realized she'd found the perfect environment for her son, but Followell broke down in the social worker's office, sobbing again. He asked her why, and she explained, "Because I know I can't afford you."
"When can he start?" the social worker replied.
With scholarship in hand, her son went on to complete six successful years at Variety School before moving over to St. Louis High School, were he maintained a high enough GPA to play football through graduation.
Every year except one when she was recuperating from foot surgery, Followell returns the favor shown her family by signing up late-registration runners, passing out pins and pointing out the portable toilets in the wee hours of Presidents Day. She sees the senior "snowbirds" from the Mainland, who flock to Hawai'i for the warm winter; the couple from Seattle who help coordinate the expo; and her friends from Variety School, who keep each other going, year after year.
Kai said more than 4,000 volunteers help put on the event. Among the groups receiving money from the proceeds are Variety School, Catholic Charities Hawai'i Elderly Services, National Multiple Sclerosis Society, Newspapers in Education, United Cerebral Palsy Association's Child Development Center, DARE, Girl Scout Council, Kick-Start Hawai'i, Hawai'i Services on Deafness, Hawaii Families as Allies, Leeward Special Olympics and the YMCA.
Kai said organizations send in requests, and often recipient groups will help out with the event. The Girls Scouts help clean the stadium, the run's terminus, where there will be festivities and a party.
"We give them money for that," said Kai. "It's not a quid pro quo, but part of their mission statement is to be of help to community."
Special Olympics, another beneficiary, provides volunteers who help out at the second aid station and in return, make new friends.
Many groups are affiliated with the Great Aloha Run, she said. Catholic Charities, which received $17,000 last year, "works with us all year long, helping to plan and put together the event," Kai said.
Reach Mary Kaye Ritz at 525-8035 or mritz@honoluluadvertiser.com.
