Friday, March 21, 2003 - Al Fink and Gene King were two of
the busiest people in Denver's Office of Emergency Management on Thursday,
fielding phone calls from workers without rides and matching them with
volunteer drivers. In a basement room of the City and County building,
Fink and King coordinate a program called FEAT - Four Wheel Emergency
Assistance Team.
Two hours after she set up a ride, Denver Police Department worker
Tonya Murphy stepped around a snow melt slush puddle and climbed into
Chris Andolsek's high-clearance, four-wheel-drive vehicle.
Andolsek and friend Paula Provence gave Murphy, who works in the
police warrants division, a ride from her Park Hill home to police
headquarters in downtown Denver.
Without the lift, Murphy might have had to remain in her home in
the 3300 block of Locust Street, which was still without power Thursday
afternoon.
Provence and Andolsek are among nearly 100 volunteer drivers who
have transported more than 200 Denver emergency workers - doctors,
nurses, firefighters, health care workers and police - since the blizzard
hit Monday night.
Volunteer drivers are recruited by Fink and King through the Colorado
Association of Four Wheel Drive Clubs.
"It's a great program," said Murphy. "I was grateful
for the afternoon ride and will be even more grateful when somebody
from FEAT drives me home when I finish work at 11 tonight."
Andolsek found - the hard way - that his International Scout wasn't
invincible Wednesday. "We were taking a Red Cross worker who
lives in west Denver to the emergency shelter at East High School,"
said Provence, "and we got stuck on a side street." "We
didn't really get stuck," corrected Andolsek. "Let's say
'temporarily delayed."' "We do this because we have a vehicle
that can handle weather like this," Provence said. "Lots
of people who do important work don't. We couldn't do the job of a
doctor, nurse or firefighter. So the least we can do is get them to
work."
The FEAT organization was born shortly after the Christmas blizzard
in 1982. King revamped it last year. "All I really did was create
a computer database," he said modestly.
Fink, a retired professor of German at Regis University, said "Our
volunteers don't make a penny, not even gas money. But they have a
ball. What can be better than doing some good and having a good time?"
