ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, August 10, 1996 TAG: 9608120024
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: RICHARD FOSTER STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Shorter version ran in Metro edition.
UNPAID SENIOR CITIZENS were honored by the Bedford County Sheriff's Office with certificates of appreciation and golf shirts with "Volunteer" spelled out in gold letters.
This year, Bedford County Sheriff Mike Brown will get away with not paying the annual salaries of at least one full-time deputy and one part-time deputy.
It might sound like a scandal, but it's not. The "deputies" in question don't exist, but the work they could have done - some 2,500 hours of mostly clerical and administrative tasks - has been performed over the last seven months by unpaid senior citizen volunteers. Brown estimates they have saved state and county taxpayers about $35,000.
Friday night, the Bedford County Sheriff's Office held a dinner at Olde Liberty Station restaurant in Bedford honoring the TRIAD program's volunteers. Participants received certificates of appreciation and TRIAD golf shirts with the word "volunteer" spelled out in gold letters.
"They mean a mint to us right now," said Cpl. Mike Miller, who oversees the volunteer program. "That's why the shirts are in gold. [The volunteers] are more valuable to us than the money they've saved us."
TRIAD is an offshoot of a national program encouraging cooperation between senior citizens and local police and sheriff's departments. The program started in Bedford County in January with six volunteers and now has 38, though Brown and Miller say they could use more.
Unpaid volunteers aren't used in place of paid staff, but they increase manpower and free up paid deputies for more important public-safety jobs.
In Bedford, volunteers generally work four to eight hours a week. Some handle nonemergency dispatch calls, type reports and perform data entry. Others help out in the county courts, escorting witnesses and people who need to pay fines.
Some work in the commonwealth's attorney's office, the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court clerk's office, or the Bedford Police Department. And still others help Miller with seminars, giving safety talks to senior citizen groups and alerting them to frauds and scams against the elderly.
The volunteers' experience varies from people who have never worked with law enforcement to a married couple who are retired from the FBI.
"The volunteers, they're just so enthused. They're really helping out. It's just turned out better than I ever anticipated," Brown said. "They get a sense of accomplishment and enjoyment from their work, but we're the ones who are really benefiting - the Sheriff's Office and the county."
Caroline Duus, a volunteer and chairwoman of TRIAD in Bedford, is a former president of the county chapter of the American Association of Retired Persons.
She says she and the other TRIAD volunteers enjoy their work and like knowing they're saving the county money. But more than that, "We get the satisfaction of hoping it will help other senior citizens feel safer, because we're freeing up officers so they can get on the road more. We work in the office so other people don't have to."
If you're interested in volunteering for TRIAD, call Cpl. Mike Miller at (540)586-7827.
LENGTH: Medium: 63 linesby CNB