By Lori Baker, Communications Volunteer

With compassion and collaboration, Pat Dillingham ensures Red Cross blood drives in Cochise County are reliably staffed with volunteers.

She balances organizational skills with a remarkably friendly and welcoming demeanor, making all of her Southern Arizona biomedical volunteers and donors feel valued.

For her exceptional service as the Volunteer Lead in Cochise County, Pat received the Red Cross Southern Arizona Chapter Biomedical Achievement Award.

In addition to her leadership responsibilities, Pat serves as a Blood Donor Ambassador volunteering at blood drives.

Pat has had many roles with the Red Cross since becoming a volunteer more than 40 years ago when she, her husband and young baby lived in Germany.

She became a Services to the Armed Forces volunteer caseworker, making sure soldiers and their family members could get back to their homes in the United States for emergency leave situations. That volunteer role turned into a paid staff position as an Assistant Station Manager and then an Acting Manager when Red Cross staffers were sent off to locations in the Mideast during Operation Desert Storm. She handled emergency communications verification and financial assistance, and also coordinated Red Cross volunteers elsewhere in the military community, including schools and hospitals/clinics. She traveled all over Germany and England providing casework training to  Red Cross volunteers for about seven years before she and her family returned to the United States.

“I am a firm believer that everyone has the responsibility to involve themselves in some volunteer role to help better their community and help that community’s members,” Pat said. “The opportunities to volunteer are endless (including schools, religious groups, organizations like the Red Cross, scouting, 4-H, hospital and retirement homes.”

After retiring from her job with the U.S. Army in 2011, Pat became a Disaster Cycle Services volunteer. She was the team lead for the Cochise County Disaster Action Team and also deployed to a number of disaster responses around the country. She has about 15 years of Red Cross volunteer service in Arizona.

Her first Disaster Relief Operation deployment was to Oklahoma in 2013 (tornadoes). Besides helping with fire response in Arizona, she has deployed to Houston (floods), Colorado (floods), Georgia (hurricane), Florida keys (hurricane) and California (fires).

“I was a supervisory caseworker at all these locations except California, where I worked in feeding. I have slept in all sorts of places on these deployments … from nice hotels to cots on church and YMCA floors to Girl Scout camps to hay bales in a stock show arena to a tent camp set up by the Danish Red Cross.” Pat said.

Pat said being a Red Cross volunteer is very rewarding and she encourages others to donate their time and talents.

“I firmly believe in the importance of the Red Cross mission and have seen firsthand how the Red Cross  has helped people — both after disasters and by ensuring the extremely important blood supply continues,” she said.

“There are so many and varied volunteer opportunities in the Red Cross. Anyone can find something that meets their current skills, or teaches them new skills, and can work with whatever amount of time they have to devote to volunteering and whatever phase of life they are in,” she added.

If you’re interested in becoming a Red Cross volunteer, go to redcross.org for more information.