Name:     Deona Koberstein	Profession:  Red Cross Volunteer
Relationship:	Country:     United States of America
Red River College newspaper: The Projector - January 23, 2006 Winnipeg, Canada KOBERSTEIN GAINS PURPOSE AND CLARITY FROM CHAOS KYLE BAKX, COLUMNIST Changing from nine to five everyday at a law office on Broadway to being engulfed in destruction, death, and devastation in Florida was the scenario Deona Koberstein indirectly chose when she left a job as legal assistant at Deeley Fabbri Sellen in Winnipeg to volunteer with the American Red Cross. Koberstein stayed with her mother, Linda Kelbert, in Seattle while patiently waiting day-by-day not knowing when she would get the phone call notifying her of deployment. When the call came she was dispatched into areas of Southern Florida reeling from the destruction of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma. Unaware she would be visiting areas suffering extreme poverty, KKK activity, and other appalling conditions of overcrowding, bug infestation and deteriorating walls - she couldn’t wait to be dispatched. Koberstein, who has a psychology degree from the University of British Columbia but couldn’t find a job on the West Coast, was led back to Winnipeg where she grew up, and became interested in the possibility of going to law school. Unsure about her desire for the field, she decided to become a legal assistant for a sampling of what the profession entailed. Whether it was a lack of stimulation from her new job or uncertainty about the direction of her life, at 29-years-old Koberstein picked up and left. The American Red Cross became her new calling. It was two months before Christmas when Koberstein broke the news to friends and family in a mass e-mail. “I am committed to staying until after Christmas at my mom’s so that I can volunteer daily for the American Red Cross and help with the hurricane relief efforts,” Koberstein wrote. “And I just found out that tomorrow I am being deployed to Orlando for anywhere from 10 days to three or four weeks.” The only other information she knew about her new position was that she would be staying at a staff shelter and would be deployed as a family service worker dealing firsthand with Hurricane Wilma survivors. Koberstein stayed with Mickey and Minnie Mouse at the Walt Disney resort on her first night, before making a secret phone call in the morning after receiving a mysterious fax at the hotel front desk. “It closely resembled a mission impossible movie… you know, where you are given a task and when it’s complete you call from a secret phone to find out what to do next, and then the message self destructs,” said Koberstein. That morning she left for Miami with other volunteers to check in at the Red Cross headquarters. “I met people from all over the country . . . from doctors, to nurses, to social workers, to lawyers, to sales clerks, to an ex-monk, to a preacher, to an actor, to - you name it.” After being formed into teams, Red Cross case workers assess whether people qualify for financial aid, and help them to receive services and other resources that they need. Sandra was the leader of Koberstein’s team. “A big boisterous, extremely big-hearted woman from Mississippi, who sounded like one of the Beverly Hillbillies when she spoke,” said Koberstein describing Sandra. “And her accent was catchy – I found myself saying ‘y’all’ a lot.” Koberstein was dispatched to areas around the city of Naples, near the southern tip of Florida. Her team visited houses and trailers, some having five to ten people living in only two rooms. Carpets were stained, covered in clothes, garbage, and bugs. So infested by cockroaches, spiders and ants, Koberstein said the walls appeared as though they were actually breathing. “The table I was supposed to use to fill out my paperwork was crawling with ants. They would then crawl on my papers and my hands and you just pray that these aren’t the ones that bite.” Most places smelled as if you were physically inside the sewage pipes. The smell of mold, rotten food, and garbage was so pungent that it could be smelled throughout the neighbourhood. Hurricane destruction was something Koberstein was prepared to deal with, however, she had not expected to see so many poor and uneducated people living in a wealthy country like the U.S.A. “The illiteracy and the poverty made me so overwhelmingly angry. And for the first time in my life when I thought about all the things I was worrying about or whining about before I went to Florida – I felt incredibly shallow.” Another place Koberstein’s group went was Everglades City, a place known for its KKK history. “Many of the homes we went into proudly displayed confederate flags and still used the word nigger like it was 100 years ago,” said Koberstein. “After only one day there we were pulled [from the location], because as recent as two and a half years ago African Americans would only feel safe walking in groups, white people would shoot them in the open, and the Hispanics didn’t feel a whole lot safer.” Despite the emotionally draining work and the added threats and dangers, Koberstein remained in Florida beyond her minimum ten-day requirement. She would stay in Southern Florida for a total of 21 days before returning back to Seattle. Her mission had been completed but the effect of the experience still resides in Koberstein today. “One of the most interesting things that happened on my trip was something that I didn’t even realize had happened until I got home. I was totally in the moment for three entire weeks. I wasn’t just living for the weekends, or for Christmas, or for some highly anticipated event” says Koberstein, “Every single moment, whether it was good or stressful or fun or frustrating, I fully experienced. And it was so emotionally and mentally less taxing than always being stuck in the past, or looking way too far ahead to things that haven’t even happened yet.”