By Gordon Williams 

Among the thousands of Red Cross volunteers in Washington and adjacent Idaho, Juan (Nito) Silva stands out as someone special. 

For one thing, he is bilingual, having spent his first 10 years in Mexico. That is a big plus for the Red Cross since Juan lives in Washington’s Tri-Cities and a quarter of the population there is Hispanic. Red Cross recruiters wish they could sign up more Spanish speakers for the Northwest Region. 

For another, Juan describes himself as an artist, skilled in painting, sculpture and pottery. Not many Red Cross disaster volunteers claim a facility for the arts. His artistic skills came to light in high school, when a beginner’s attempt at pottery won prizes. 

These days Juan serves the Red Cross in many ways. He has responded to disasters with Red Cross Disaster Action Teams (DAT) and met regional then-communications manager Betsy Robertson at a chapter volunteer appreciation event. She was looking for a Spanish speaker for a TV interview and Juan was eager to help. Now he is a fully-fledged member of Betsy’s Communications Team, jumping in when a Spanish speaker is needed. 

Juan’s real passion is the Red Cross Home Fire campaign. That initiative, started in 2014, seeks to reduce death and injury from fires in the home, by installing smoke alarms in homes that don’t have them. Over the years, the Red Cross has installed well over a million smoke alarms, and having those alarms in place has saved over 1,300 lives. 

The action side of Home Fire is Sound the Alarm (STA)--a series of smoke alarm installation events throughout the country. Red Cross teams descend on higher-risk neighborhoods in a three-week push to make homes and their residents safer from home fires. Hundreds of Red Cross volunteers work on STA events, but few approach the event with the passion and enthusiasm that Juan does.

“Sound the Alarm is an amazing program,” he says. “If it just saved one life, we would be doing our job.”

Of course, it has saved far more than one life; it has saved many. Beyond saving lives, Juan sees STA as a great motivator, able to draw volunteers to the Red Cross. 

“A Sound the Alarm event can motivate a 10-year-old to want to become a volunteer,” he says.  

Juan’s passion for Sound the Alarm shows in the time and effort he puts into the program. He has worked eight STA events over the past two years and estimates he has personally installed at least 100 alarms. Mostly that has been in Washington, but he also led a drive to install smoke alarms in Puerto Rico.

“We started Sound the Alarm in Puerto Rico earlier this year,” he says. “We kept on installing alarms until there were no more alarms to install.” 

Puerto Rico was where he had his first disaster role with the Red Cross in 2017. The island had been ravaged by a hurricane and Juan had both friends and family there. At that time Juan says he knew little about the Red Cross.

“I knew they helped in disasters and collected blood but not much more,” he says. Still, he was eager to help so he went online and signed up as a Red Cross volunteer. 

Juan admits he had no idea what a Red Cross disaster response involved. “I thought maybe they would ask me to hand out food,” he says. “The reality was totally different.”

On his first day in Puerto Rico, he met a storm victim who had lost everything and was contemplating suicide. Juan had no training in dealing with anything like that, but his basic humanity saved the day. 

“I offered him a bottle of water and we sat on a curb and just talked,” he says. “That was my initiation to the Red Cross.” 

There are more Sound the Alarm events coming up this spring and Juan will be fully involved in them. He will continue to use his language skills to tell the Red Cross story to the region’s large Hispanic population. Along the way, he will be doing his best to bring more Hispanic volunteers to the Red Cross. 

Juan has a second home, far away on the Big Island of Hawaii. Even there, far from Washington, Juan can’t banish thoughts of disaster and of how the Red Cross brings relief to disaster victims. That’s because just a 30-minute drive away is Kilauea — the most dangerous volcano in the U. S., and one that required a Red Cross response in the past. Not much farther away from Juan’s Hawaii home is Mauna Loa, the world’s biggest active volcano. Juan knows full well that one day Red Cross responders will be needed, and he has every intention of being there.