By Ron Leir
KEARNY –
Fires, floods, storms – they’re all things we would run from.
But Kearny’s Cheryl Olcheski makes a point of running to them.
That’s because Olcheski is a volunteer with American Red Cross of Northern New Jersey whose job involves helping the victims of all types of natural disasters.
For her outstanding work, Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG) presented Olcheski, a 37-year PSEG employee, with the Betty Flood Award of Excellence at its annual Recognizing Excellence in Volunteerism luncheon, held Oct. 4 at the company’s Newark headquarters.
The award, which was established in 1992 in memory of Elizabeth “Betty” Flood, who, while working as a PSE&G telecommunications assistant, ran an after-school program for more than 300 youngsters. Her efforts earned her a President’s Volunteer Action Award from then-President George Bush.
With the top PSEG award comes $10,000, which will be used by the recipient’s Red Cross chapter for volunteer training, disaster relief and the purchase of emergency supplies such as blankets, clean-up and comfort kits, wireless cards, portable radios and ARC safety vests.
Olcheski said she began volunteering in 2005 after watching news reports about the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the victims, the elderly in particular, and wanting to do something to reach out to them. “This is what made me pick up the phone, join and start my training that Labor Day weekend,” she recalled.
In October, the Red Cross assigned her to a call center in Bakersfield, Calif., where she spent three weeks taking care of the volunteers and working the phones on overnight shifts.
Then it was back to New Jersey, and that Thanksgiving weekend, she got her first taste of disaster response when she was dispatched to help the victims of a fire in Clifton.
Since then, Olcheski says, she’s made herself available for duty “just about every weekend,” depending on her availability and a volunteer rotation schedule.
In the winter, often she’ll get a call to help “during a snowstorm when nobody else is on the road” but she ventures out without hesitation.
What motivates her? “Because I can and because I’m able to,” she says. “If I needed help, I hope somebody would be there for me. And there’s a lot of good people I work with. We help each other out.”
Olcheski has worked primarily in Jersey City, Newark, Paterson, Passaic and East Orange, but she has made occasional forays into Bergen County.
The Northern N.J. chapter also serves Sussex and Warren counties, and in the last year, the chapter responded to 237 disasters and provided nearly $311,000 in emergency disaster assistance to more than 1,700 people.
In the past 12 months, Olcheski – who was born and raised in Harrison – was part of a team that pitched in to help residents of the Hoffman Grove section of Wayne when they were hit by flooding.
“My team arrived less than two hours after those affected were allowed back in (their water-ravaged homes),” Olcheski said. The team provided food and clean-up kits. It was “heart-wrenching” to see the results, she said.
“Walking in these areas right after a flood, you are confronted by the dried dirt, the smell of oil, mud and standing water,” she said. “To see all their possessions on the lawn, either to be dried out or thrown out, is incredibly hard for the homeowners to deal with – that is why I am there.”
Among the many fires Olcheski responded to, one in Jersey City that struck a family of 12 the week before Christmas stands out.
“Their apartment was destroyed,” she said. “When we first arrived at the scene, their relatives were waiting for the firemen to bring out the toys the family had already bought for the children for Christmas morning. I was able to get cleaning material from nearby stores, and, with the relatives, we cleaned the new toys for the children to open on Christmas Day.”
Meanwhile, Olcheski and the rest of the volunteers visited the entire family at an area hospital where they had been taken for treatment of smoke inhalation and arranged for the police to send a van to take the family to a hotel for temporary lodgings.
“After all the family went through that day, they didn’t hesitate to wish me a Merry Christmas as they left (for the hotel),” Olcheski said.
“While these families that I encounter are not left with much, the shoulder I give them to cry on and the ear I lend for them to talk to helps to give them the hope that they need to recover from the disasters they endure,” she said.
