For the local American Red Cross chapter, personal attacks have
been more of a problem to deal with than any real disasters.
Kathryn Engelhard, the relatively new director of the San Benito
County chapter of the Red Cross, said she has made it her priority
to make the county as safe and prepared as possible.
For the local American Red Cross chapter, personal attacks have been more of a problem to deal with than any real disasters.
Kathryn Engelhard, the relatively new director of the San Benito County chapter of the Red Cross, said she has made it her priority to make the county as safe and prepared as possible.
“About two months after I started, I had a board retreat and I said we’re going to make San Benito County the safest county in California,” Engelhard said. “Which means to get at least one person in every household trained in first aid and CPR. That’s a big goal, but it doesn’t mean I can’t obtain it.”
Engelhard took the job as director a little over a year ago, transferring from her position as director of the Ellensburg, Wash., Red Cross.
She took the position because she wanted to head a larger Red Cross chapter and she had always wanted to move to California, she said.
“I wanted to move to this area because I thought it was so beautiful,” she said. “It was similar to what I had just left… but it was a change.”
She didn’t expect the situation that confronted her when she took the job though, she said.
The chapter had been involved in improper managerial procedures that she had to fix when she became director, she said. The interim director is now being charged with several counts of felony fraud charges, Engelhard said.
“When I came in, there were a lot of controls that weren’t put in place that national requires,” she said. “Inappropriate use of the chapter credit card, how money was taken in, how it was logged. Things to make sure that there’s no chances for anything inappropriately done with the donor dollar.”
Some of the changes she made have caused some citizens to become upset, writing to the Free Lance that the new director treats volunteers badly and isn’t doing her job.
Engelhard believes this stems from the controversy created by the interim director, she said.
“I think there’s a lot of blame that it’s my fault,” she said.
Cleaning up procedures and getting the Red Cross back on track has taken much of Engelhard’s time, but the county’s volunteers and basic Red Cross framework has been paramount in helping to sustain a level of assistance to victims, she said.
“We have great dedicated disaster volunteers – I am so impressed with how dedicated (they are),” she said. “There’s a lot of people where Red Cross runs deep into their veins and I really enjoy that. For me, it’s just moving forward.”
Engelhard has gone to several conferences around the country in order to receive better training for herself, board members and volunteers, she said.
Conventions she and several board members have gone to create optimal managerial performance, fundraising tactics and development, she said.
“It’s not just me running off here and there,” she said. “Things that I’ve attended are things that we should be going to.”
Board members are made up of local people who live in this community who believe they wouldn’t want to live anywhere that didn’t have a Red Cross, Engelhard said. An issue that confronted her when she took the job was that some of the board members didn’t have a whole picture of what the Red Cross was about, she said.
One of the first things she did was bring volunteers in from outside the chapter to do board orientations so they could begin networking and communicating with other board members, executives and volunteers, she said.
“It was so they could see not just what’s in San Benito, but the whole perspective,” she said. “I’m trying to get people who are really well-trained and seeing the big picture.”
Some people have voiced their concerns as to why their calls are being routed to the San Diego Red Cross and if this means the local chapter is shirking their responsibilities.
San Benito is required to have after-hours service and because San Diego is so vast, with a huge amount of volunteers, they offer out that service, Engelhard said.
In the past, trying to find volunteers to do after-hours care wasn’t efficient because of the small size of San Benito’s chapter, so some of the larger chapters took on that service, she said.
“It’s pretty standard through California, Oregon and Washington Red Crosses to use San Diego,” Engelhard said. “They take that call for us and then relay the message – they’re just our answering service.”
If an employee or volunteer is out of the office during the day, or a call comes in the middle of the night, San Diego is going to receive the call and immediately contact either Engelhard or Tina Lopez, the chapter’s preparedness specialist.
“The longest it’s taken me to respond to a call from San Diego is seven minutes,” Lopez said. “I think that’s pretty good. Just because our office is closed doesn’t mean services aren’t being taken care of.”
The chapter has sent someone to every call they’ve received. Whether an individual or family partakes of their services is up to them, Lopez said.
“One thing I really pride myself on is that if it is something we cannot service, I don’t stop there,” Lopez said. “I take it as a personal mission to at least contact the other resources in the community to make sure their needs are taken care of.”
Any community would suffer without the services of a Red Cross, Engelhard said. The services provided make a community safer, a better place to live, she said.
“If your house burns down in the middle of the night, we’re going to be there for you,” Engelhard said. “I don’t think anyone should live in a community without a Red Cross.”
