Humor, tenacity all in a day’s work

Lovable “Knuffle Bunny” was drying out on a tabletop, next to the wavy and waterlogged pages of “Gilbert the Great” and “The Ants Go Marching.”

Yet Marilee Roloff remained surprisingly sanguine. She strolled through the basement offices of Volunteers of America, assessing the damage from a broken pipe that left several inches of murky water on the floor and threatened her vast supply of free children’s books.

“Listen, this is the way I look at it,” Roloff said, stepping over the hose to an industrial water vacuum. “Nobody’s dead and nobody’s hurt.”

After more than three decades in social work, the 55-year-old president and CEO of Volunteers of America Spokane retains a ruggedly optimistic outlook, as well as a mix of self-deprecating humor and tenacity.

“She is absolutely relentless,” said Linda Stone, Eastern Washington director of the Children’s Alliance, a statewide advocacy group. “If there’s something Marilee has on her mind that she thinks is good for kids, you better just give in because she will be on your doorstep every day.”

Roloff has gradually moved from hands-on social work to the administrative task of overseeing a nonprofit agency that serves thousands of people in Eastern Washington and North Idaho – from housing for teenage mothers to shelters for street kids and support services for families whose children need mental health care.

Next month, the Children’s Alliance will recognize Roloff’s work both in Spokane and Olympia, where she finds “unusual and effective ways to get the attention of policymakers,” the advocacy group said.

Roloff’s messages to legislators, occasionally delivered in song, are rarely subtle.

In a nominating letter, Mary Ann Murphy, executive director of Partners with Families and Children, praised Roloff as “honest and forthright – a rare quality these days.”

During the 2005 legislative session, when many social agencies were facing threats to their funding, Roloff set up two model trains, running on the same track, in opposite directions. As legislators watched, the trains, which represented the state and federal governments, bore down on a small plastic doll tied to the tracks.

“I get in trouble speaking my mind,” Roloff said, with a laugh. “But having a sense of humor about it, that gets me off the hook sometimes.”

Her path from rancher’s daughter to community leader began in her socially active church in the tiny town of Creston, Wash. Her mother, a civics teacher, encouraged her to be involved in the community.

As a political science major at Washington State University in the early 1970s, Roloff’s plans to attend law school were derailed when she worked as a student volunteer. Her job: to help assess the living conditions in Spokane’s low-rent downtown apartments.

The college student was shocked.

“People were sick and dying and hungry, and without a soul in their life” to help, she said. “I had no idea people lived like that.”

She found inspiration in a Catholic nun, Sister Lois Marie. When an indigent or homeless person died, Sister Lois would rent a bus, and take her staff to the cathedral for the service. Afterwards, they’d have cake and ice cream, Roloff remembered.

It was a celebration of life, and a reminder that no one should live – or die - in isolation.

“That’s what social work is,” Roloff said. “It’s saying to someone, ‘You are not alone.’ “

Those early lessons launched Roloff into a lifetime of work. She has worked with the elderly, volunteered with people with mental illness, and counseled homeless, teen mothers. She also helps organize the Christmas Bureau, a holiday effort supported by readers’ donations to the The Spokesman-Review Christmas Fund.

She tries to understand, rather than preach.

“If you go into this business, you have to go into this in a nonjudgmental way,” Roloff said. “If you start to judge, you’re sunk from the start.”

At Crosswalk, a downtown center and shelter for street kids, Roloff has listened to the sometimes horrifying stories the teens told about their home lives. But when she met with parents to help reconcile the families, she realized the effort and energy and love exerted by them.

“I realized how much these parents love their children and how alike they were,” Roloff said. “It was another illusion shattered.”

The Children’s Alliance award also recognizes her work to provide housing to young single women and mothers – a group that often draws scrutiny and sometimes ire.

Today, Roloff is herself a single mother. She is divorced from attorney Steve Eugster, and has two children. Her son, the local rapper Andrew Walters, goes by the stage name, “Locke,” after the 17th-century English philosopher. Her daughter, Annie, is a 15-year-old sophomore at Lewis and Clark High School.

She jokes that the administrative work – the budgets, the system planning, the survey and reports – is “necessary but it’s not real work.”

When the planning and paperwork overwhelms her, Roloff slips out of her office to play with the children in the center’s Head Start program. The therapeutic play sessions are a relief, even as the program faces steep federal budget cuts.

Likewise, Roloff oversees the distribution of about 50,000 free books a year to low-income children, but makes sure she gets to hand out some of the books.

“It’s one way I get to be directly involved,” she said. “I get to hand a book to a child. That feels good. Everybody needs a little lift up sometimes.”

The children energize her, she said.

“We all need something. It’s not just the poor; it’s not just the disabled. It’s all of us,” Roloff said. “Sometimes you’re the giver. Sometimes, you’re the receiver.”