Senior Puts Her All Into Helping Peers

At the awards ceremony to name the Outstanding Volunteer of 1996, Ruth Ross was looking around the room at everyone else working with the Organization for the Needs of the Elderly.

“The next thing I knew, they called my name,” said Ross, a retired business manager for a health magazine who for nearly two decades has volunteered with the group known as ONE.

“My knees were shaking,” Ross said of the honor she received Saturday at the Valley Senior Service and Resource Center in Reseda.

Then, Jo Zeitouni, the group’s director of volunteers, turned her around and pointed to the back of the room. Eight members of her family had slipped into the gathering, including her 3-year-old great-grandchild. “Seeing them was as much a shock or more,” Ross said.

Her volunteering began in 1978, when the group was still young and soon after Ross had retired. “Someone had recommended that I go over to the center,” she said, because “there may be something interesting going on over there.”

A casual inquiry about volunteering led to a commitment of nearly 20 years. For much of that time, she has been a reliable, steady presence at the center, first working as an intake volunteer--handling initial interviews with clients and explaining the center--and eventually becoming a peer counselor.

The nonprofit, West Valley-based ONE has a staff of 70 paid workers and 400 volunteers who help senior citizens live a better life independently.

“Ruth has been volunteering here at the center pretty much from when we got started in 1978,” said Lola Rabow, ONE’s director. Working as a peer counselor on Mondays, Ross offers a sympathetic ear to sometimes lonely seniors who come in. It’s also been a way of making friends at a center that she considers a sort of extended family.

“It helps them a great deal when people have a problem--they have lost a loved one and they just have to talk to someone,” Ross said.

On Wednesdays, she works at the group’s Mark Taper Intergenerational Joining Older and Younger program, also run by ONE. There seniors and young children can play games and join in activities together. “They do the macarena,” Ross said. “I think it’s fun. They really enjoy it.”

Ross throws herself into all sorts of volunteer activities at ONE. “I feel good about being active and busy,” she said.

She has headed the group’s advisory council, served on committees for fashion shows and golf tournaments, helped at weekend dances and at the farmers’ market most Sundays.

“She’s just an amazing person,” said Zeitouni, adding that Ross’ workdays can stretch from from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. “I don’t know how you get so much energy out of somebody like her.”

Her smile, cheerfulness and impeccable way of dressing have always been her trademark, just as much as her unassuming way of getting things done, Zeitouni said.

Perhaps it is because of her unassuming nature that Ross was speechless, near tears and weak-kneed when her name was called and when the crowd gave her a standing ovation Saturday. She has not worked so hard expecting to receive the glass statue in the shape of a “1” given to the outstanding volunteer, she said.

“It has nothing to do with it,” Ross said of why she volunteers. “This is my second home. I get more out of it than I give.”

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