Making A Difference: An Occasional Series Profiling North Idaho’S Community Leaders Mission To Drive Jim Erlanger Takes Neighborliness To Heart By Taking Seniors To Their Appointments, Reading To Kids

Strategy helps a trip to Spokane almost slip by Sadie Brooten’s guilt meter as her volunteer driver steers his car onto Interstate 90.

Brooten is so grateful to the volunteer service that she tries to use it as little as possible. When she does need it, she makes every moment in Spokane count.

The Coeur d’Alene woman scheduled the Spokane ear, nose and throat doctor first thing in the morning to check on her dizziness. The audiologist is next, and conveniently in the same building as the first doctor. He’ll check her hearing aids.

The afternoon will begin with a trip to the eye clinic to adjust the attractive almond-shaped glasses Brooten wears. The medical marathon will end at the dentist’s office.

“I try to include as many appointments in one day as I can,” Brooten says, as she settles into the passenger seat of a white Honda station wagon. “Everyone isn’t as patient and considerate as Jim.”

Jim Erlanger holds the door open until Brooten fastens her seat belt.

“She’s special. She’s a celebrity,” he says, smiling as he closes the door on his neatly dressed 86-year-old rider. “I said, `Anytime she needs a ride, please make me first choice.”’ Brooten is Erlanger’s favorite passenger, but not his only one. He’s volunteered his time, fuel and car for five years to drive North Idaho’s oldest residents to their medical appointments in Spokane.

The Retired Senior Volunteer Program oversees the service. Kootenai Medical Center matches drivers and patients. Erlanger is one of five dedicated volunteers.

“He’s wonderful,” says Rita Tubbs, who supervises RSVP for the Area Agency on Aging. “He has no problem with whatever we need.”

Erlanger refuses compensation for gas. He often takes passengers at a moment’s notice. The biggest challenge for the retired New Yorker in Hayden Lake is fitting his shuttle service between his other volunteer activities and traveling with his wife, Judy.

“He’s very caring. He believes in helping people,” says Richard Kohles, who sits on the Habitat for Humanity board with Erlanger. “On the other hand, he doesn’t believe in helping people who don’t help themselves.”

Erlanger had no time to volunteer his services during his working days. He was an electrician for Con-Edison in New York City. His construction job at a nuclear power plant sometimes worked him months without a break.

He had no complaints. But his union nagged him to see a doctor about his exposure to asbestos. The electrical cables at work came wrapped in asbestos. Erlanger had to unwrap and rewrap them.

He doubted asbestos-related health problems because he felt fine. But doctors diagnosed him with asbestosis, the scarring of the lungs from asbestos exposure. It can lead to breathing problems, lung and chest lining cancer and heart failure.

Erlanger retired at age 55 in 1993 and followed his heart to the West. He’d never traveled west of the Mississippi River except with the military. Still, research led him and Judy to Coeur d’Alene.

They arrived in late 1993. Erlanger’s strong New York accent attracted immediate attention, but so did his friendliness. Neighbors took to the man with the ruddy Irish cheeks, dark eyebrows and powerfullensed glasses.

Erlanger is a productive man and he filled his first retired months with moving and traveling around the nation. But his personality pushed him to fill his time efficiently as he settled into Coeur d’Alene and the trips ended.

Newspaper want-ads clued him into volunteer opportunities. He tried one that didn’t fit him, then noticed the RSVP ad.

RSVP approved his background and experience and put him on the road. Erlanger is an avid reader and wisely carried a book along. He knew after the first trip that he’d found a mission.

“It felt nice and neat, a square box of a job done and completed,” he says. “It was satisfying.”

RSVP called Erlanger when a senior needed a ride to Spokane for medical appointments. If he was available, he called the passenger, chit-chatted, then arranged a time he could pick her up. Five times as many women needed rides as men.

Passengers had to be at least 55 years old. Most were much older. Buses and taxis cost too much and bus schedules were difficult to arrange appointments around.

Erlanger learned quickly to offer friendliness to most of his passengers but not deep friendship. He drove several passengers he never saw again - and stopped himself from asking what had happened to them.

He also asked RSVP not to assign him to one woman he believed took unfair advantage of the volunteer transportation program.

RSVP recognized him as a dependable volunteer and asked him to consider donating some of his time to schoolchildren. Erlanger joined the Apple Corps, a group that helps children read.

He gave two hours two days a week for three years to third-graders at Hayden Elementary, then Borah Elementary. Children ran to him as soon as they saw him and giggled at his gentle teasing.

“I loved the kids,” he says. “It was very disheartening to see some who came from homes where they got no attention. These kids would crawl into my lap.”

Erlanger joined the Spokane Bike Club at the same time he began volunteering. He had time to bike again and felt frisky. It wasn’t long before he was donating his time to direct some of the group’s longest - 100-mile and 200-mile - recreational rides.

Habitat for Humanity caught his attention when a building project needed an electrician. The homebuilding program matches Erlanger’s philosophy to help people who help themselves. The Habitat board of directors quickly noticed Erlanger’s wisdom and willingness and asked him to join.

The busy volunteer schedule hasn’t stopped Erlanger from remodeling the Hayden Lake home he and Judy moved into two years ago. And it hasn’t dethroned the RSVP driving program as his top priority.

“It does a lot of good, and I like to know a lot of people,” he says, following Brooten into the parking lot after her visit to the eye clinic.

Erlanger considers it a privilege to drive the courteous Brooten. RSVP exists in North Idaho because of Brooten. She was Kootenai County’s director of senior services in the 1970s. Her leadership opened the federal RSVP in North Idaho and started senior centers.

“The idea was to involve retired seniors in volunteerism - to serve and for their own personal enrichment,” she says. “I never thought I would need the program.”

Brooten volunteered for so many good causes that she reaped in awards. Now, dizziness stops her from driving, but she uses RSVP and other programs as a last resort.

“I hate to bother anyone. I want to be independent,” she says.

Which is one reason Erlanger loves to help her.

“She is so grounded in this program. She has a phenomenal memory,” he says, then offers to cook lunch for her at his house the following day. He’s an expert cook. “I get a lot out of this. Someone did something nice for me once and said, `Pass it on.’ So I am.”

This sidebar appeared with the story: INFORMATION To volunteer

To volunteer for RSVP or find out about its services in the five northern counties, call 667-3179 in Coeur d’Alene or (800) 786-5536.