Your Red Cross Update

As an American Red Cross volunteer since 2010, Roxanne Anderson has deployed to more than 35 disasters across the continental United States and several island deployments including the islands of Guam in June 2023 and the American Virgin Islands in 2017. She is one of those special volunteers who has, “been there, done that.”

Roxanne, who lives in San Jose, joined the Red Cross after spending 30 years as a California Highway Patrol officer. She’s done a wide array of Red Cross roles, including disaster response feeding, sheltering, managing logistics, driving an emergency response vehicle (ERV), supply and transportation. 

States she has been sent to, in addition to her home state of California, include Illinois, Georgia, Missouri, Connecticut, Colorado, Arizona, New Jersey, Washington, North Texas, South Carolina, North Carolina, US Virgin Island, Oklahoma, Florida and Guam. She has responded to floods, hurricanes, wildfires, a gas pipeline explosion and multi-structure fires, tornadoes and mass shootings. 

“Feeding is my forte. That’s what I love to do,” Roxanne says, especially when she’s been able to go out in an ERV on a daily route following a major disaster where Red Crossers get a chance to interact with the people they are helping.  

“Being on an ERV is the hardest but most rewarding job in the Red Cross,” Roxanne says. “Those are real 12–14-hour days.”  

“The people on those routes, they just pull at your heartstrings,” Roxanne says. She remembers an early assignment where one small town resident told her stories about wrestling as he picked up food each day. On the last day “he literally came out in full costume wanting to show me,” Roxanne says.  

A teen in another family with at least half a dozen children told Roxanne that she, like most of the kids in her area, had dropped out of school. “I just kept encouraging her,” to go back to school, Roxanne says, until the day the girl didn’t show up for a food delivery because, her family said, “she had gone back to school.”  

“Those are the things that keep me in the Red Cross,” Roxanne says.  

Roxanne also serves as an inspiration to other Red Cross volunteers. Tune Duong-Toy said that soon after she started volunteering for the Red Cross earlier this year, she met Roxanne who shared her love of the feeding role. “From there on I’ve been doing mostly feeding,” Duong-Toy says. “Roxanne inspires me.” 

And when Tune, also a San Jose resident, was recently sent on her first assignment outside the area, she relied on Roxanne to ease her first-timer jitters. “I called her, and she really walked me through a lot of things,” Tune says. “I knew that she was always there if I needed something.” 

“You feel like she has your back,” she said.  

“She’s patient. She’s knowledgeable. She doesn’t micromanage. She gives you an assignment and trusts you to the work,” Tune says. “She supports you.”  

Roxanne and her husband, who is also retired from the California Highway Patrol, have a daughter and son in their 30s and granddaughters who are 1.5 and 4 years old. All live in the Bay Area. “They are the best,” Roxanne says of her granddaughters. “They’re the ones who keep me grounded when I’m on deployment.”  

Even though she’s responded to dozens of disasters for the Red Cross, Roxanne says she still has trouble sleeping the night before she flies off to a new assignment.  

“When I went to Guam it was for the supply position,” Roxanne says, and supply is “about acquiring things.” The isolated location of Guam was a special challenge, “getting those container ships over and flying things in.” Local ways of doing business were also different than on the mainland. “Every location is different in how they do things,” she says, including Guam where even the receipts and purchasing from stores “were totally different.” 

“I am able to ensure people get what they need in a timely manner,” she says, while also trying to get things for the least amount of money. “We always try to negotiate,” she says.  

But the challenges of her jobs are one of the things Roxanne loves. “You just tell me what to do and I’m going to get it done,” she says. “And I’m not afraid to ask for help.”  

While responding to a disaster is serious work, Roxanne has also been able to have fun while helping the Red Cross, including flying to Florida to drive a new ERV cross-country to the Silicon Valley Chapter in California. Roxanne and her driving partner, Phyllis Schmidt, mapped a route that allowed them to take in sights including the Indianapolis 500, the Space Museum and national parks. “We did have fun,” she said, along with a whole lot of driving. 

Roxanne, thank you for lending your time and expertise to support communities across the country in time of need!  

The Red Cross needs more people like Roxanne – visit redcross.org/volunteertoday to learn more about becoming a volunteer.