Author Archives: Rick Payne

Darryl McCullough’s 30 Years of Service to the Armed Forces

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Photo courtesy of Darryl McCullough

For more than 30 years, patients at the David Grant U.S. Air Force Medical Center’s McClellan Outpatient Satellite Clinic have received a warm greeting from David McCullough as they entered the premises. Since August 1993, Darryl has volunteered with the Red Cross at the clinic every week Monday through Friday. Medical center personnel call him the “face of the clinic.”

Darryl greets and talks with patients at the front desk and often escorts them to their appointments in the building. To ensure it’s a welcoming space for all visitors, he goes above and beyond to sanitize the waiting area and conference rooms. In addition, Darryl helps the administrative department with tasks such as copying and sorting papers.

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A Volunteer Committed to Helping Others

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Photo courtesy of Barbara Atlas
American Red Cross

Barbara Atlas is an example of volunteerism. She has been committed to the Red Cross mission since she started as a Disaster Action Team (DAT) member with the National Capital and Greater Chesapeake Region in Washington DC. “For 4 of the 37 years we lived four miles from the White House, I enjoyed responding to fires and other local disasters as a DAT team member,” she said.

After they retired, Barbara and her husband moved to Oakland in 2019. She knew she wanted to continue supporting the humanitarian mission of the Red Cross. One of the many ways she jumped back into volunteering locally was by becoming a blood delivery driver for the Bay Area Chapter Blood Services team. “I get a lot of pleasure from driving a Red Cross van to transport blood, both the pickup of new blood from donor centers and delivering blood as needed to local hospitals. I know that donated blood is saving lives. It is also gratifying to train new drivers for transporting blood and thrilling to see my former trainees on the job. But most important is getting to know the generous people who work in Blood Services helped me learn how,” she said.

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