Volunteer Sue Conklin Makes a Difference

When Greenville businesswoman Sue Conklin sees a need in her community, she fulfills it. Whether as the owner of The Puppy Nanny or as a volunteer for the American Red Cross, she has a true passion for making her community better.

Experience has taught Sue that animals respond better to compassion rather than force, a business philosophy she learned from Horse Whisperers, Monty Roberts and John Lyons. The gentle technique has served her well as she and her husband Paul trained thoroughbred horses for 20 years, managing farms in Ohio, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.

When career changes brought Sue to the Upstate and back to dog training, she identified a need in the community for in-home training services. As do many successful business owners, Sue filled a niche in the market and built her business, The Puppy Nanny, on home consultations. The ability to offer a flexible schedules and training in both behavioral and puppy consultations distinguishes her in the field of training.

A true “dog whisperer,” Sue’s expertise is in demand. She has been featured on local TV shows speaking about dog training and safety. She appeared on the Montel Williams Show and has given demonstrations on obedience and training at pet expos across the country. She has been written about in articles for national dog magazines and has authored commentary on training issues featured in local newspapers.

Believing strongly that education is the key to making positive change, Sue took the Pet First Aid class offered by the Upstate South Carolina Chapter of the American Red Cross. Seeing the value of this skill for her business, Sue became a volunteer instructor for the Red Cross and now teaches Pet First Aid to her clients and others in the community.

As an active volunteer instructor of the Red Cross, Sue realized that the pet first aid equipment owned by the Red Cross needed repair. Again, seeing a need, she turned to her friends, students, and local businesses to raise the funds necessary to purchase new pet manikins. Through her efforts and generous donations from the Cleveland Park Animal Hospital, Andrew and Diana Gilbert, Sam and Linda Ross, Gene Johnson, Terri Kiker, Ann Martin, Marc Balsa, and Graham and Katharine Greene, enough funds were raised to purchase two CasPeR the CPR Dog Manikins for the Red Cross; no small feat as the cost for the manikins totaled more than $400.00.

Sue’s career as a pet trainer has spanned nearly two decades and more than 2000 dogs. Some of her training graduates have gone on to become Search and Rescue and Pet Therapy dogs and have made television appearances. Mostly, her trainees have simply become beloved family pets.

Sue exemplifies the high-caliber of volunteer making a difference at the Red Cross and in the community. In addition to being a wife, a mother, and a business owner, she gives of her time ensuring the Upstate is ready when emergencies happen.

Today, We Are All Hokies

It is a phrase of unity heard around the campus, the community, and the world. Students, faculty, staff and alumni are now returning to the campus attempting to make sense of the incomprehensible.

The Drill Field at the heart of the Virginia Tech campus is a place of sacred honor as many memorials to the fallen and injured can be seen. It is a place of great emotion. Tears from friends, and loved ones sprinkle the ground as they remember the horrific events that unfolded here less than one week ago.

The American Red Cross was on the scene less than an hour after the incident offering mental health counseling and spiritual care. Although this is not a natural disaster, to this community and to those who experienced this horrific event it is an emergency with immense impact.

It is a privilege to be on the campus of Virgina Tech to offer hope as part of the American Red Cross response effort. The services available to those in need are numerous. Mental health counseling, spiritual care, transportation for the families of victims, assistance for medical expenses, and even assistance for funeral expenses are some of the services that are offered through the Red Cross.

Soon the students will return to class and resume life on campus as normal...if there can be a normal after an event like this.

As time permits, I will post more on the hope effort in Blacksburg.

Red Cross Responds to Disasters Here

By Bob Hammersla, Chairman of the Board

Recently, I heard the story of Janie Turmon. Janie cares for her mother, brother, sister and three children, some of whom have physical disabilities. She and her family were the victims of a terrible house fire.

"Everything I had worked so hard for went up in flames," she said, "We sat on the curb in front of our burned up house. I cried and cried. We were homeless. ... I had no idea where to go or what to do. What an awful feeling!"

But Janie and her family did not stay on that curb for more than a few minutes, thanks to immediate assistance provided by the Upstate Chapter of the American Red Cross.
As you may know, the Red Cross is not just a single national organization -- there are individual chapters throughout the United States.

Volunteers from the Upstate Red Cross were the ones who showed up at the scene of Janie's home fire. Resources from the Upstate Red Cross enabled them to shelter Janie and her family and see them through their ordeal.
Most of us, however, are totally unaware that the funds to create these resources come only from our community. We are the ones who make it possible for the Red Cross to respond to local disasters.

Our Upstate Red Cross has offices in Greenville, Anderson, Abbeville, Greenwood and Laurens counties. Why? Because it takes a network of volunteers and resources to serve our region, to respond to local disasters and keep us and our neighbors out of harm's way. For the past two years, our Red Cross has responded to an average of one disaster a day locally for an average cost of $1,000 per family.

So far this year, our Red Cross chapter has expended over $225,000 to help more than 798 of our friends and neighbors survive catastrophic events -- mostly single-family house fires -- that don't make the news.

The chapter offers other critical community programs, such as CPR, First Aid, Automated External Defibrillator training, lifeguard training, teaching our toddlers to swim, certifying nurse assistants to qualify them as caregivers and providing emergency communications for the armed forces.

Our local Red Cross touches the lives of 5 percent of the Upstate population. Some of the activities the chapter is involved in are chartered to the Red Cross by the U.S. Congress but not funded in any way by the government.

These programs and services are delivered by a corps of more than 700 volunteers. In fact, the local chapter is so heavily driven by volunteers, they outnumber the paid staff 30 to one. Each volunteer averages 23 hours of training to provide various Red Cross services. These community heroes donate services worth more than one million dollars a year! The chapter could not function without them.

So where does the money come from, then? Most of it comes from us -- from our responses to local fund-raising events and from individual and corporate donations (39 percent). In addition, some program funding does come from United Way (17 percent), grants and course fees.
You and I and every corporation and every citizen in the five Upstate counties benefit from the local Red Cross. It's in all of our interests to support them -- from the smallest company to the largest corporation whose employees might someday need assistance to survive a fire, or a flood, or a tornado.

The American Red Cross is always there when we need it. But what if it wasn't? How would that impact our community? Think of this:
Some 1,500 disaster victims would not receive food, shelter, clothing and other immediate emergency assistance.

More than 17,000 professional, lay rescuers and citizens would no longer be able to provide CPR and First Aid to victims in the community.

Nearly 5,000 lifeguards and children would not learn water safety.

That's why I'm excited to share that Alvin and Wanda McCall are issuing a challenge to our community:

They have pledged $50,000 and are challenging the community to match it between now and April 30 as a way to support this vital community resource.

I encourage you to take this opportunity to get involved with the Red Cross. When you do, remember Janie Turmon. Without the Red Cross, she and her family would have been left with nowhere to turn.