“I can’t make it, but my mom can!”

Earlier this month we hosted a passport clinic. 150 appointment slots this time, more than double what we'd had at our last one. That meant we needed help, and when we need help, I go down our list of neighbors first. Our community tends to be the first to respond when there's a need and the help we need is usually right around the corner.

So I began to call. I called Jonathan. He's volunteered with us for years and he's bilingual, which matters a lot on a day like this: families filling out forms, asking questions, needing someone to walk them through it in Spanish. I asked if he could come help.

He couldn't. But right away he said,

"I can't make it, but my mom can."

We're all familiar with getting volun-told around here. This could've easily been one of those moments. It wasn't. Jonathan's mom already had a habit of showing up. She'd helped at our food distributions plenty of times before. She isn't bilingual (and that would've been helpful at a passport clinic). She came anyway.

She spent the day welcoming families as they arrived, checking that they had the right documents, and sitting with people while they waited. Not the task we had in mind for Jonathan, but one that needed doing just the same. And with 150 appointments to get through, we needed every bit of it.

By the end of the clinic, more than a hundred neighbors walk away with a passport application submitted.

That doesn't happen without volunteers like Jonathan's mom: the ones who turn someone else's "I can't" into their own "I can," the ones who get volun-told and happily come anyway, the ones still figuring out where they fit as they walk through the door.

It's someone showing up and finding where they fit once they get there. That's what Jonathan's mom did. That's what our neighbors do.

Miriam Zuñiga,

Adult Program Director