Resident Celebrates 20 years of Volunteer Work

LOMA LINDA>> As a longtime resident of the Inland Empire, Shirley Dolloff has volunteered her time for more than 20 years to the Loma Linda Ronald McDonald House. Dolloff grew up in Wisconsin and after she graduated high school, she made the move to California to live with relatives and to work for the County of San Bernardino Superior Court. Throughout her life, she and her family experienced pain through the loss of two of her grandsons and her son, who passed away from cancer. After her grandsons passed away, she said she decided she needed to do some work and started working at the Children’s Center in Riverside, where she lived at the time. While volunteering her time there, she said she heard the Loma Linda Ronald McDonald House needed volunteers and has volunteered there for more than 20 years. “It was a healing I think for myself, as well as working with families that were hurting,” Dolloff said. “It was a blessing. Fathers have a hard time dealing with sick children and being a grandmother, I could just give them a hug and they would cling to you.” She said she had the opportunity to talk to families about the Lord and said the house has seen many blessings for the families. Throughout the 20 years of her service, Dolloff said she would volunteer two or three times a week, or sometimes once a week. Now, as a Loma Linda resident, she helps count the loose change that comes in from donations when she goes to volunteer. Although, she said she has done a little bit of everything. Dolloff said when her son passed away from cancer, Mike Kovack, executive director of Loma Linda Ronald McDonald House, was always by her side in the hospital and would always ask how she was doing. Now, she says working with him is like old times again. One of her fondest memories throughout the years, she said, was when the directors from Ronald McDonald House in Japan came to receive training from the Loma Linda staff in 1999. "I’m so happy that we do not have to turn families away,” Dolloff said. “It’s so hard when a family needs a place to stay and there’s no room for them. Some of them have no family close, so I just pray that others will continue to volunteer there and give support in any way possible.”