Volunteers Give Back

Helen Dittus’ workout regimen is impressive. Every morning, she wakes up at 5:15 to take care of her two cats. Then she walks for an hour.

After breakfast, she goes to the gym. Then she teaches a senior exercise class at Belle Cooledge Library or Belle Cooledge Community Center. She finishes the day with another 1.5-mile walk.

The fact that Dittus turned 85 in April makes her workout impressive, though she insists she’s not superhuman.

A cardboard box can save lives.

Don’t believe me? Ask Robert Metcalf, professor emeritus of biological sciences at Sacramento State and co-founder of International Water and Health Alliances.

With his wife, Mary Beth, a retired physician, Metcalf helps raise funds to support an organization called Friends of the Old, or FOTO, a community group in Lower Nyakach, Kenya.

The program provides reading glasses for elderly people, seeds for the neediest households, education for girls and, perhaps most importantly, water-treatment supplies.

The prey lands. A trap is sprung. The prey struggles but is no match for the enzymes that slowly digest it between vibrant green lobes with tooth-like trichomes.

No, this isn’t a scene out of “Little Shop of Horrors.” It’s the daily eating habit of a Venus flytrap, one of hundreds of carnivorous plant species that capture our imagination.

“Carnivory in plants has arisen at least 12 different times in 12 different areas around the world,” says Ron Nies, president of the Sacramento Bromeliad and Carnivorous Plant Society. “The whole idea of plants absorbing insects makes sense. They grow in areas with nutrient-poor soils, so they catch insects to supplement their needs.”

The next time you meander along the American River Parkway and spot volunteers armed with gloves, grabbers and trash bags, give a friendly wave.

They’re probably dedicated members of the recently formed River City Waterway Alliance, a volunteer group that hosts weekly cleanups of local waterways to restore and protect these precious, imperiled resources.

“Water needed a strong focus for trash cleanup efforts,” says Kathleen Ford, who co-founded the alliance with David Ingram, Mark Baker and Lisa Sanchez. “Our rivers, creeks and streams contain a really egregious amount of trash, so we decided to focus our efforts on local waterways.”

“Any time we can convert an overwhelming, depressing issue into something we can be creative in thinking about, there is hope for change,” Cindy Fowler says.

She could be talking about any number of issues as facilitator of the Sacramento advocacy team for the Friends Committee on National Legislation, a Quaker lobbying organization on Capitol Hill.

But today she’s referring to the Loving Earth Project, a traveling community textile project that encourages people to think creatively about climate change.

It might seem hard to imagine working until you’re age 87, but when you meet Mary Ellen Fort, who celebrated her 100th birthday in December, it’s easier to picture.

Though Fort loved her job at American River College, what she enjoyed most was that the work allowed her to help people. After earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in psychology and counseling at Sacramento State, Fort taught psychology at ARC.

Then she went into counseling and eventually helped develop the Mathematics, Engineering and Science Achievement and Minority Engineering Program, which became a national standard for helping minority students get into science, math and tech studies.