Volunteers Facts

As she tells it, Catherine Roberts dreamed her son Nat, deployed to Iraq, was wrapped in a quilt. She woke up in her Delaware sewing room and made one, then sent it to a wounded stranger at Walter Reed. Volunteers have since hand-sewn over 454,000 Quilts of Valor for veterans touched by war, about 3,000 a month. The 450,000th went out in July 2026. They are still sewing.

In October 2017 a wildfire forced Guy Fieri and his family out of their Santa Rosa home at 2 a.m. The house survived. By that weekend he and volunteers were feeding more than 5,000 evacuees and fire crews a day, by his own count. He has since cooked for crews at the Camp, Carr, Kincade and Dixie fires. On September 14, 2026 he served dinner to the crews at the Lucas Fire camp.

Hurricane Helene tore apart Chimney Rock, North Carolina in 2024. Amish and Mennonite craftsmen from Pennsylvania answered the call. They sent buses of 35 to 75 volunteers every week, working for free. Over the winter they framed dozens of tiny homes. They also poured a new foundation for a 125-year-old inn. Almost a year later, they delivered their final tiny home to a Vietnam veteran.

Winnipeg was about to disappear under floodwater in the spring of 1997. Tens of thousands of volunteers, including students bused from their classrooms, filled more than 8 million sandbags by hand. Crews then raced to build a 26-mile wall of earth and sandbags across open farmland in just four days. The wall held, and the city stayed dry.

Those giant wooden castle playgrounds from the 1980s and 90s were designed by kids. Architect Bob Leathers visited local schools, collected children's drawings, and turned them into blueprints. Then the town's own parents and volunteers built it by hand, usually in about five days. He did this in more than 2,000 communities.

The Pony Express lasted only 18 months before the telegraph replaced it in 1861. But volunteers never let it end. Every June, more than 750 riders saddle up for the Pony Express Re-Ride, carrying real, postmarked mail 1,966 miles across eight states from Missouri to California in ten days, day and night. Riders still gallop the trail, passing the mail pouch horse to horse, just like 1860.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall gets washed by hand. Vietnam veterans get down on the granite and scrub it themselves, with buckets, soft brushes and a hose. Their group, Chapter 641, started the ritual in 1996, and through 2026 that is 31 seasons of vets and volunteer groups washing the stone together. The wall carries 58,281 names. They are still out there scrubbing it, every warm season.

About two out of every three firefighters in America are volunteers. More than 18,000 U.S. fire departments have no paid staff at all. In those towns, a plumber, a teacher or a farmer answers the call. They leave the job the moment the pager goes off. That's still true in most of small-town America.

In 2011 a tornado tore through Joplin, Missouri, and a few competition barbecue cooks towed their giant smokers over, figuring on four days and 5,000 meals. More cooks kept arriving, and they stayed nearly two weeks and served 120,000 meals to families and first responders. That crew became Operation BBQ Relief, now past 12 million meals, and the smokers still roll out to wrecked towns.

Bill Gross's parents couldn't afford to pass down their North Dakota farm, so he became a 747 captain. Over the Pacific, he told a copilot his retirement plan: buy a tractor and help farmers in crisis. A friend said not to wait, so in 2005, still flying, he started Farm Rescue. It has helped more than 1,300 families and is looking for the next one this harvest.

The 501st Legion, Darth Vader's own troopers in Star Wars, is named after a real fan club. Two South Carolina fans started the club in 1997 for people who wear their own stormtrooper armor, and Star Wars borrowed its name with Lucasfilm's approval. The club's volunteers still suit up for free at parades, charity walks and visits to kids.

When an ice storm shut down roads across the South in January 2026, Jeep clubs offered nurses free rides to work. In Longview, Texas, six Jeeps and Broncos made more than 200 trips, taking hospital staff to their shifts and home again. Every driver was a volunteer, and the hospital surprised them with gift cards for gas. One East Texas club has done it since the 2021 winter storm.

Bill Broadie came home from Vietnam a wounded 19-year-old Marine and met anti-war protesters. In April 2008 volunteers he gathered from the cattle business cooked ribeyes for Kansas National Guardsmen leaving for Iraq. Broadie died in 2021, and his All American Beef Battalion kept hauling its cookers from base to base. By late 2025 it had fed 457,500 troops and family members in 29 states.

The John J. Harvey was a New York fireboat the FDNY retired in 1994, and volunteers bought her at auction in 1999 and restored her. On September 11, 2001, the water mains at Ground Zero were broken, so the fire department radioed the old boat back to ask if her pumps still worked. Her volunteer crew pumped beside two FDNY fireboats for 80 hours. She is 95 now and still gives free public trips.

Harrison Ford has personally flown more than 300 kids on their first airplane ride, and at one Young Eagles Day he flew 43 kids in his de Havilland Beaver. He chaired the Young Eagles program from 2004 to 2009, and in 2016 he flew a 16-year-old at Oshkosh as Young Eagle number 2,000,000. Volunteer pilots still take any kid aged 8 to 17 up for free, and the count has passed 2.5 million.

Fire damaged Los Angeles' Central Library in April 1986. Over the next several days, some 1,400 volunteers helped box salvageable books. More than half a million wet volumes went into commercial freezers to stop mold. McDonnell Douglas then offered an unlikely tool, its space chamber, and dried tens of thousands of books free. The library reopened in 1993 and is open today.

For six years, Detroit fans trespassed onto the empty field of the torn-down Tiger Stadium with their own lawnmowers. Tom Derry started it in 2010, when the diamond where Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth played had weeds up to eight feet tall. His crew grew to about 30. Police kept throwing them off at first, and they kept coming back. Detroit kids play ball on that same spot today.

More than 420 severely injured veterans have been handed the keys to mortgage-free houses built around their injuries. It started when a Massachusetts construction supervisor saw a news story about a soldier who lost both legs in Iraq, found no group building homes for men like him, and started one in 2004. New houses are still being handed over.

Every spring, volunteer line crews travel to the Navajo Nation to connect homes that have never had power. This year, 51 utilities from 24 states sent crews for Light Up Navajo. In 14 weeks, they wired 269 homes for electricity. In Arizona, Judy Crank plugged in her refrigerator for the first time. She heard it hum to life. 'It's on,' she said. Then she opened the door and saw the light.

When the 2012 New York City Marathon was cancelled, more than 1,000 runners took the ferry to Staten Island with backpacks of blankets, batteries and food. Superstorm Sandy had wrecked the island, where the race starts, and the mayor called it off two days before. Sports doctor Jordan Metzl rallied them on Facebook, and his group ran 15 miles, then helped clear out a family's home.

When Serendipity Books in Chelsea, Michigan needed to move to a new storefront, owner Michelle Tuplin asked the town for help. On April 13, 2025, around 300 residents showed up and formed two human chains down Main Street, passing all 9,100 books by hand to the new location. Ages 6 to 91, all in one line.

Paul Brittain runs a tree service in North Carolina. When an 85-year-old widow called for firewood and said she could not pay until her Social Security check came, he delivered it himself and told her at the door, "I ain't coming back for no money." Then he kept coming back anyway, with new tires for her car, a patched roof and a fixed heater, all free.