For St. Albert resident Mike Anhorn, who was just voted best local volunteer in the St. Albert Gazette Readers' Choice Awards, helping other people is something he simply sees as "part of [his] DNA," going way back to when he was younger and learning from his mother.
"I think it is who I am," Anhorn said. "My mom taught me to help people, to be courteous, to be kind. It's just something that mom instilled in me years and years ago. You're not just there for yourself. You're there for everyone else too."
The 83-year-old retired electrician was born in Coronation, a small town in southern Alberta, before moving to Leduc, then Edmonton. He finally settled in St. Albert, where he has lived for approximately 30 years. His volunteering journey started with Pedal Pushers, an after-school program to help kids learn basic bike and traffic safety skills. He said he worked with three different schools.
"Kids would come down there mostly with their parents and their bikes and you would teach them how to properly get on and off, how to stop and look before crossing the street," Anhorn said. "We had a little track kind of set up that showed, 'This is a stop sign, this is where you get off, this where you walk across, route safety."
Eventually he took that and applied it to the Canada Safety Council, teaching people how to ride motorcycles.
He was also a volunteer in the neonatal unit at Royal Alexandra Hospital, where he said he'd go and help hold and talk to babies that had just been born in the cardiac area.
"Nurses say they want to hear a male voice also, because a lot of the moms are from out of town," he said. "So they used me as a stronger voice I guess, I don't know. And I've got a deep voice so I can hold the babies close to me and hum and it would vibrate enough that it would settle some of them down. That was kind of challenging. Scared the heck out of me to start."
His work with the Jessica Martel Memorial Foundation and Jessie's House started when he found out a family member was being abused. He said he and his wife help buy groceries for those staying at the shelter, notably jars of pickles. They also helped provide gifts for a program the foundation runs.
"If a doctor feels there's someone that has been abused, Jessie's House has a person that will go and talk with them," he said. "We did up gift bags and my wife and I sponsored that. So it'd be a chocolate bar in there or a can of some kind of beverage or juice. Some little things to break the ice when you go in and talk to the person."
He said that he and his wife Joyce also plant flowers for Jessie's House. They wish there wasn't such a demand for a place like Jessie's House, but added they "feel very strongly and we will support them with everything we have."
