400 volunteers help Otero County for annual Day of Caring
ALAMOGORDO – An armada of orange-shirted volunteers was dispatched around Otero County on Friday morning, a force working as part of Thrive in Southern New Mexico’s annual Day of Caring.
More than 300 volunteers from Holloman Air Force Base and 75 civilian volunteers signed up for the annual event to do yard work and light maintenance for county residents unable to do the work themselves.
Volunteers help out from Alamogordo to Cloudcroft to Boles Acres, Thrive Executive Director Linda Elliot said.
This year, volunteers tended to about 150 jobs and donated around $78,000 worth of man hours, she said.
“The volunteers donate their time and put it back into Otero County,” Elliot said. “This is the 27th Day of Caring and it’s grown consistently every year.”
Each year, Thrive picks a date for the annual event and sends out residential job request forms to all of the senior centers in Otero County. Seniors can ask for help doing such tasks as house cleaning, tree trimming, yard work and light maintenance. To be eligible, a resident must be housebound, handicapped or low income, Elliot said.
Once the requests are in, the city and county are divided into zones, with teams of volunteers assigned a specific zone. Once work on one property in the zone is complete, the volunteers go to another.
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“(The recipients of the work) love to see the young people, and it gets everyone out of their normal routines,” Elliot said.
The amount of work they’re able to do depends on the donations they get from residents and area businesses, Elliot said. Local hardware stores donate supplies, fundraising helps with operating expenses, area grocery stores donated food to feed the volunteers, she said.
This year, the White Sands Habitat for Humanity lent Thrive their contractor to oversee the construction of a ramp to a home in Boles Acres, Elliot said.
Many Alamogordo residents, such as Melvin Horton, look forward to the Day of Caring each year. Horton lives in a mobile home park for seniors, but the park does not provide any upkeep to his property, which has a number of trees, he said. With his limited income, Horton said he can’t pay someone to do it.
“This time of year, with everything drying out, I’m glad to have the help,” he said. “I worked real hard all my life, but then you get old.”
Alamogordo resident Carol Wood has been receiving help from Thrive for the past seven years and found out about the program through the Alamogordo Senior Center. She typically used to trim her pomegranate trees herself but now needs assistance to do so.
“They’ve done a beautiful job,” Wood said. “I just can’t keep up the yard since my husband passed away.”
Holloman Tech. Sgt. Jasen Haslund said he wanted to help his community and the Day of Caring seemed like a good way to do it.
Haslund worked on Carol Wood’s property and helped realign screen doors and cut two-by-fours to prop up an old trunk that had been in Wood’s family since the 1800s.
“I wanted to help out, give back, but I never had time a few years ago,” he said. “But I’m in a spot now where I can do volunteer work. I’m used to it now – I’m a dance dad and I do a lot of Girl Scout stuff with my daughters.”
For more information about the Day of Caring and the other services offered by Thrive, visit the group’s website at letsthrivenm.org or call 575-437-8400.
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