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Volunteers at Games go beyond extra mile
By Brady Snyder
Deseret News staff writer
Do-gooders everywhere be warned — the bar has been raised.
The Salt Lake Organizing Committee's volunteers — much praised for their collective kindness during the 2002 Winter Olympics and Paralympics — set a new mark last weekend.
The height was established via a cash gift, collected from volunteer pockets and church plates on a snowy Sunday morning and given to a group of Canadian Paralympians who had been robbed a day prior.
The Canadians, part of the country's fledging Paralympic hockey team, played an exhibition game at the Steiner Ice Center against their American counterparts on the final day of the 2002 Winter Paralympics.
While Canada's team secured the victory, they returned to the locker room to discover their lockers ransacked and their money — totaling $1,000 — gone.
When a corps of volunteer drivers, who had grown to love the team as they shuttled them from place to place, heard about the theft Sunday morning they were determined that the team wouldn't go home disappointed.
"We passed the hat and everybody threw in some money," said volunteer driver Roger Haws.
When the hat came back it held $485.
Volunteer Willie Dunford decided that wasn't enough and headed to Kaysville, where her church has Sunday morning services.
She was able to gain the pulpit and told her church of the need.
A toddler decked in a fancy Sunday dress pulled $1.51 — a dollar bill, two quarters and a penny — from her purse. An older girl, maybe 12, gave $70, which was a birthday present she received a day before.
By the time Dunford left church she had $901.51.
While that cash was being offered up, another volunteer was at his church, a smaller body also in Kaysville, and he collected more than $450.
With the volunteer money and the cash from the two churches, the group raised nearly $1,861.51 in a couple of hours — just in time, since the athletes were leaving Sunday afternoon.
"We just wanted to say that it wasn't fair what Americans did to you and there are quite a few good (Americans) left," said Ed Botkin, a volunteer driver.
The Canadian team was stunned.
Canadian Amputee Hockey Committee member and player Donald Wade accepted the donations on behalf of his teammates, who paid their ways to Salt Lake and spent their own money promoting amputee hockey.
"We are short of funding anyway," Wade said. "It really restored our faith in the citizens of Salt Lake when that happened. It made us think that Salt Lake should be our 13th province."
By all accounts there wasn't a dry eye when the money was given.
"They couldn't believe it," Haws said. "They just couldn't believe that we were doing this for them. Those guys were just sobbing."
Botkin said the macho team could have been pushed over with a feather they were so physically weak with joy.
Wade said the team loves Salt Lake and wants to use some of the extra money to erect a small statue, maybe in the lobby of the Grand America Hotel, in honor of the volunteers.
E-mail: bsnyder@desnews.com
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March 19, 2002
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