'It's the idea of helping': Responding to local disasters has become a holiday tradition for two unlikely friends

On paper, Chris Sadlocha and John Rudolph couldn’t be more different.

Sadlocha is a retired elementary school teacher of 40 years and Rudolph is a former volunteer firefighter and paramedic with an interest in amateur radio. But like many Red Cross volunteers, they have one very important thing in common.

“You know, we’re helpful people,” Sadlocha laughed.

Both drawn to the American Red Cross in the hopes of making a difference in the lives of those facing

emergencies at home in Delaware and Otsego Counties and across the country, the unlikely friends paired up for the first time as Disaster Action Team (DAT) members on New Year’s Eve just four years ago.

“Responding to fires and helping people wasn’t a far spur from what I used to do,” Rudolph explained. “Chris was there to help me. We went out on my first few calls together. He’s been a giant help there.”

As DAT members, those calls regularly consist of being some of the first on the scene in the wake of a disaster – primarily home fires. Red Cross DAT volunteers like Chris and John are often some of the first to meet with families in the wake of devastating home fires and provide support to those who just lost everything.

“We’re there to try and give them some peace of mind. Some funds for food, hotel, clothing, whatever they need to get them stable and figure out the rest. Being able to be there for them in that way may seem like a small thing, but when these people are going through this, it’s something huge.”

In the 2021 fiscal year, Red Cross volunteers responded to 936 local disasters in the Western New York region – the majority of which were home fires – and provided immediate emergency assistance to more than 1,600 families. For Red Crossers like Chris and John, it doesn’t matter the time or the day as they consider themselves always “on call.” In fact, this past Thanksgiving holiday, Chris volunteered his time to answer the call – driving more than an hour to assist a family impacted by a home fire in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania.

“What are the pieces that drive us? You know, it’s the idea of helping,” Sadlocha explained. “I’m in a warm house, I’ve got plans maybe to go work out in the garden, take a walk, do some reading. Meanwhile, those folks down there have lost their home. They’re experiencing one of the worst days of their lives and we can provide some relief for that. So, we’ll take that drive for that.”

But as they approach another anniversary of their first response together this New Years, they both admit they could also use some help. Over the years, the pair has added considerably to their DAT duties with Sadlocha taking on roles as a Regional Onboarding Lead among others, and Rudolph now assisting DAT responses virtually as a Duty Officer while training to serve as an Emergency Response Vehicle operator on local and national responses.

Always looking to add to the DAT roster and the Red Cross volunteer base in general, the duo is encouraging others to resolve to volunteer with the Red Cross in any capacity this coming new year.

“No matter what the job is, it’s the people working together,” said Rudolph. “I have found that even in the worst cases, people find a way to deal with it and make it as enjoyable as possible.

“Probably the strongest thing I could say to persuade somebody to join the Red Cross is you can really help and provide the relief to somebody that’s having the worst day of their life,” Sadlocha explained. “It’s highly rewarding. There are volunteer positions with the Red Cross that you don’t get in a whole bunch of other places.”

To learn more about available volunteer positions, including the Disaster Action Team, visit redcross.org/volunteertoday or contact RecruitWNY@redcross.org.

Gone, but not forgotten: Red Cross of WNY volunteers to pay tribute to unclaimed WWI veterans in special ceremony Saturday

For Lisa Taibi, Regional Program Manager of Services to the Armed Forces (SAF) and International Services for the American Red Cross Western New York Region, it was an ironic intersection of personal and professional life that has provided an opportunity for the Red Cross community to honor dozens of World War I veterans who had gone unclaimed by family at their time of death.  

She and her SAF board and committee volunteers will pay tribute to those veterans by laying wreaths at 47 graves in the Riverdale Cemetery in Lewiston, Saturday, December 18, as part of the national Wreaths Across American Initiative. Additional Red Cross staff and volunteers will also recognize veterans by placing wreaths at Whitehaven Memorial Cemetery in Rochester, NY; and the National Cemetery located on the VA grounds in Bath, NY. 

The genesis of the recognition of veterans interred at Riverdale can be attributed to a huge coincidence. A resident of Niagara Falls, Taibi was actually visiting the graves of family members buried at Riverdale several years ago when she noticed a large monument just a stone’s throw away.  Investigating for the first time, she was surprised to see that it was an American Red Cross monument, along with dozens of grave markers. 

“I have family buried in Riverdale Cemetery so I'm in the cemetery often,” Taibi said.  “I walk around and look at stones not far from my family’s stones and I came across this big Red Cross monument. This was when I actually worked for the Niagara Falls chapter of the American Red Cross. I remember going back, taking a picture of it, going back to my executive director at the time, saying, ‘hey, what is this all about’”?

Neither she nor the Executive Director Chapter were able to find any information about the monument, which dated to the early 1900s.  Taibi tabled her interest for awhile to focus on the demands of her SAF duties and it was not until last spring, when the period of isolation due to Covid-19 got her thinking about how to engage her board and volunteers in a community-based project.

“We hadn’t been able to do a lot of in person things, so I was thinking about what we could do that would be outdoors for Memorial Day and it hit me - this monument popped back into my head.”

A co-worker had connections at Riverdale Cemetery and Taibi reached out to ask if there was any information on how the Red Cross got involved with WWI veteran graves and the monument. They were able to produce some limited information that documented the former Niagara Falls chapter made the purchase in the early 1900s. Apparently, the Red Cross purchased 85 gravesites, but not all are filled.

“There are 47 headstones and they list the name, the date of birth, the year they died, the branch of service they were in, and their military rank. And then, of course, this big monument explaining what these graves were,” Taibi explained.

The SAF committee embraced the opportunity to recognize the veterans.  As a Memorial Day project, they purchased flowers and flags to mark the graves, and scrubbed headstones, making a huge improvement in appearance as many burial sites appeared not to have been attended to in decades.

The Memorial Day activities and the placement of holiday wreaths symbolize the commitment of the Red Cross Service to the Armed Forces (SAF) program to America’s military community.  While perhaps not as widely known as the Red Cross Blood Services program or Disaster Relief services that provide assistance on national and regional levels, the Red Cross SAF program holds a congressional charter to provide the direct link of communication between the active duty service member and their family at home.

However, as Taibi states, the Red Cross commitment to military members and their families extends far beyond.

“Our mission is to support our veterans, in any way that we can. We have a continuum of care that begins the day they're sworn into active duty, throughout their military career, as they transition back into the civilian world, and we stay with that veteran until the day they die. We have volunteers that participate in the No Veteran Dies Alone program at the VA, where if there's a veteran actively dying and they have no family, we have volunteers who sit with that veteran until the veteran passes because they don't want that veteran to die alone. We truly stay with the veteran throughout their entire life, from the moment they go off to boot camp until literally the day they die.”