Many times when you are growing up you think that when you finish college you will have a great job and make tons of money. As you grow up you realize that serving your country and fellow humans make you so much richer then you ever imagined. I left a very lucrative career to spend a year accumulating the latter type of wealth, and am better off for it. I have learned skills that I would have never got sitting in an office crunching numbers. I was a tax preparer for the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program and not only learned how to do taxes for many different types of tax payers but also how to budget and live with a lot less.
One client made the a lasting impact on me in my year as an AmeriCorps member. She was a very nice lady that called to make an appointment we chatted and I scheduled her an appointment to come in. She called the day of her appointment to say she would be late. “I hate to use this as an accuse, but I am very old and everything takes a little long when you are my age” she said. When she finally came in I sat her down and asked her for her social security card and drivers license. She was very upbeat and energetic I figured she was about 70 and retired. When I looked at her I.D. her birth year was 1919! She had just celebrated her 92nd birthday. She had been working as a security guard at one of the casinos in town. I was so amazed that she was still working a full time job and I wanted to know much more about her. She grew up in Georgia to a sharecropper and her grandparents we born into slavery. I would have never gotten to know this amazing lady if not for AmeriCorps.
You get very few chances to meet truly extraordinary people when you sit in a desk and live a sheltered and are tangled in your own life. AmeriCorps gave me the chance to untangle and have a new set of experiences. I will never forget my clients and how they taught me to relax and enjoy the scenery.
Christina J. Cordova
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