Your Red Cross Update

Some stories remind us that service is more than a calling—it’s a thread that weaves lives together. This is one of those stories.

From volunteer in 1968 to employee eight years later, Bill O’Callahan began his work with the American Red Cross when he was young. But his family’s connection began even earlier than that. In fact, his mother used the help of the Red Cross to notify his father of Bill’s birth while his father was serving off the coast of North Korea.

Providing that same service, where the Red Cross connects families to their relatives in the armed forces during emergencies, was Bill’s job in 1976.

“They would basically lock me in the building and I would answer phone calls for military families at night,” he recalls.

Meanwhile, Julie Glascock’s passion for service also started early. A volunteer for the Red Cross and other organizations since high school, she spent time as a “candy striper” helping elderly folks in nursing homes and teaching first aid in college. Her commitment to humanitarian work eventually led her far from home—into the jungles of Guatemala, then six months in the streets of Haiti and later to famine relief efforts in Chad, Africa.

“I was a nurse. I was working at San Francisco General,” says Julie of the time in 1985 when she got the call from the Red Cross to volunteer in Chad. The country was experiencing a massive famine, caused by drought and political instability in the region. Upon arriving, Julie and her fellow volunteers drove to small villages in the countryside to assess the situation and deliver food where it was needed. “Cooking up porridge on an open fire and having people come and be served there,” she remembers, recalling the heartbreaking need. “There was such overt poverty everywhere.”

At one point, her team had to be urgently relocated by helicopter further south due to increasingly dangerous conflict near the Libyan border. But they continued to organize food distribution and set up feeding stations and Julie even assisted in a surgery. Despite malaria and hardship, her resolve never wavered for the six months she was there. Upon returning from her trip, she was keen to share with others her positive experience of volunteering overseas.

“I thought the [Red Cross] organization had a lot to be proud of; about how America was responding to needs in other parts of the world,” says Julie.

She was invited to give a speech about it at the Red Cross office in San Francisco. By then Bill was a social worker for the Red Cross, assisting veterans, refugees, and disaster survivors. He was in the audience that day.

Bill remembers vividly: “I was just totally taken by her presentation and what she did, and basically her courage at even doing that. Going to a foreign country where they were speaking French and having to do her nursing and feeding job… in a war zone frankly! And so, I was just totally – besides being incredibly cute – I was just totally taken with her. Who she was, her moral fiber, her empathy and courage.”

Julie took note of him too: “I did notice a handsome guy near the back of the room who appeared to work there.”

About a week later, Bill called Julie. Their first date? Opening day for the San Francisco Giants baseball team. “It progressed pretty quickly from there,” Bill says. By December, they were engaged. In Spring, they married—and kept serving. Together, they responded to disasters, including a five-alarm fatal fire at a seniors’ facility in Redwood City that required evacuating hundreds of vulnerable people.

“When you go into battle with them, which is what a disaster is, then you build really strong friendships because you depend upon people when you go through things like that,” Bill reflects. Julie adds, “It builds community because you are helping with your neighbors. It can be the antidote to a frightening world.”

Life was busy—Julie started medical school to become an OB/GYN while Bill advanced in disaster response for the Red Cross and then emergency management for other agencies.

“Bill was saving the peninsula AND our family!” Julie says of those years. They raised three children, shared humanitarian law lessons with Red Cross volunteers, and never stopped answering the call to serve.

“We had the phone ringing in the middle of the night for all of our career, for either disasters or for babies that needed to be born,” remembers Bill.

Today, they still live by the values that brought them together. Bill returned to the Red Cross as a volunteer in 2018 and now co-leads mass care and government operations for San Mateo County. Julie is on sabbatical from her OB/GYN role but continues to support his humanitarian work.

Bill sums up why he has had such a long-standing commitment to the organization: “I really identify with the Red Cross values: humanity, impartiality, all of that is really important… it has become so central to providing assistance to people.”

Julie adds, “When you hear about fear, suffering and injustice it can be completely overwhelming. And the best response is to be part of the solution.”

Their story is a reminder that service doesn’t just change lives—it builds them.