April 19-25 is Volunteer Appreciation Week. To celebrate this important week, we are highlighting the people who carry out the important work of the Red Cross---ordinary people who donate their time and talents to help others. If you would like to join their ranks, visit our Volunteer page.

Gretchen Meyers has felt connected to the Red Cross since she was eight years old, but it’s first-hand experiences from the past few years that have left such an incredible impression on her that she gives up her vacations and free time to serve as a volunteer.

A longtime Florida resident, Gretchen and two of her daughters are hurricane survivors. Her oldest daughter, a resident of New Orleans, was the driving force behind Gretchen’s journey to become involved with Red Cross.

In 2005, in the days before Hurricane Katrina struck, Gretchen was in constant contact with her daughter. After the storm hit, she was unable to talk to her for three days. The unbearable wait, made increasingly difficult by seeing the endless images of devastation on her television set and the empathy she felt for her daughter and her daughter’s neighbors made her place a call to Red Cross. She wanted to travel to help.

By the time Gretchen was on a plane headed to Florida, she had received word that her daughter was okay and staying at her sister’s home. Knowing others had not faired as well, Gretchen continued on, determined to help those in more dire straits.

For the next two weeks, Gretchen served as a Red Cross volunteer. Those weeks were filled with intense encounters with residents at a shelter in Crestview.

“Those days were unbelievable. People would line up. They would come to you and you would do your best to help,” Gretchen says.

The stories she heard from the residents made her job heart-wrenching at times, but the hard days were balanced by the good. Gretchen helped coordinate a wedding at the shelter, complete with a wedding cake donated from a local grocery store. She loved watching children’s shows with a little girl who did not want to be alone. And the air was filled with music.

“We had a shelter resident who was a concert pianist. When he evacuated, he took his piano. He would play all day for people in the shelter,” she says.

For the next two years, Gretchen kept current with her Red Cross training in southeastern Wisconsin, opening and working at shelters for local residents who were displaced because of fires and flooding.

In 2008, Gretchen decided to take a vacation to Florida. While on that vacation, she volunteered at a Red Cross shelter just a short drive from her vacation home. A local neighborhood was flooded, and Gretchen contacted the local Red Cross chapter and offered to help.

“The people who stayed at the shelter were the nicest, most polite group of people I have ever worked with,” she says.

Every day she provided meals for the residents, and helped the mothers care for the more than 100 children at the shelter. The work was exhausting.

“Some afternoons I would come home, so tired, and ask myself if I wanted to go back. But how could I not?” she says.

No matter where the shelter, Gretchen knows she can help. No matter what state, she is ready to help prepare meals, take care of the kids who have nowhere to go. Gretchen is ready to care.

“Volunteering has been such a learning experience. I am so blessed,” she says. “People at the shelters are so grateful.”

The American Red Cross in Southeastern Wisconsin relies on donations of time and money so they can provide relief to victims of disasters and help people prevent, prepare for and respond to emergencies in Dodge, Kenosha, Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Racine, Walworth and Waukesha counties. To donate your time, please visit our Volunteer page. Financial donations can be made online through our secure contribution site.