HERMISTON
TRAPSHOOTING
TEAM FINISHES
SEVENTH IN THE
NATION >>
SEE A10
WEDNESDAY, JULY 18, 2018
$1.00
HermistonHerald.com
INSIDE
“ We are unable to secure enough volunteers to have an ongoing volunteer program on a long-term basis. ”
FUN TIMES
Funfest attendees worked
to beat the heat during
Splash and Dash, live
entertainment and the Cool
Rides Car Show.
PAGE A3, A15
Paula Hall, Director and CEO of Community Action Program of East Central Oregon
Helping the helpers
PUMP IT
Gas stations in Umatilla
County can face fines if
patrons pump their own
gas.
PAGE A7
RISKY BUSINESS
Local convenience stores use
video surveillance, low cash
supplies and other measures
to reduce robberies.
PAGE A11
BY THE WAY
Farm-City Pro
Rodeo to get
national spotlight
The Farm-City Pro
Rodeo is going nation-
wide this August.
The rodeo, in its 31st
year in Hermiston, will get
a bit of the national spot-
light as its Saturday per-
formance will be televised
on CBS Sports on Sunday,
August 19 at 6 p.m.
“We want to fill every
seat,” said David Bothum,
a member of the rodeo
board. “We’ve been work-
ing on this show since
April. People have volun-
teered their time and put in
hard work. We’re going to
make it look good.”
Only three other stops
on the Wrangler Tour —
Prescott, Arizona and
Nampa and Caldwell,
Idaho — will get the CBS
Sports coverage.
And people can keep
up with the action all
week. For the first time,
each night’s performance
will be streamed live at
ProRodeoTV.com.
For more on this year’s
signature
Hermiston
rodeo, our guide will be
inserted into the Aug. 1
edition.
• • •
Students from Uma-
tilla High School Key
See BTW, Page A16
STAFF PHOTO BY E.J. HARRIS
Volunteers Maricie Myers, from left, Jan Maitland and George Fuchs sort through donated items on Tuesday at the Agape House in Hermiston.
By JAYATI RAMAKRISHNAN
STAFF WRITER
F
ood banks, warming shelters and dona-
tion centers are all held together by a
sometimes invisible force: volun-
teers. But finding people to fill those roles
has become increasingly difficult due to an
aging volunteer base and a lack of new peo-
ple stepping in.
Paula Hall, director and CEO of Commu-
nity Action Program of East Central Oregon,
said they tend to have more luck when they
go out and search for volunteers for a spe-
cific project, such as the Dancing with the
Stars event, or the Homelessness Point in
Time Count.
“We don’t have a large pool of volun-
teers,” Hall said. “It seems to be more suc-
cessful if the volunteer project is a time-lim-
ited duration instead of ongoing.”
CAPECO serves as a regional hub for ser-
vices to low-income and disadvantaged peo-
ple, and many volunteer efforts for things
like food banks are coordinated through spe-
cific agencies. But she said there are difficul-
ties with getting consistent volunteers.
“We are unable to secure enough volun-
teers to have an ongoing volunteer program
on a long-term basis,” she said. “We have
volunteers who want to come in and do a
couple hours once every couple of weeks.
It’s very hard to build a volunteer base on
those inquiries.”
STAFF PHOTO BY E.J. HARRIS
Mark Gomolski, at left, of Hermiston loads food into a box while volunteering at the Agape
House on Tuesday in Hermiston. Also photographed are volunteers Kyran Miller and Maria
Trevino.
The organization utilizes volunteers for
its food delivery program, as well as peo-
ple to work at warehouses and local food
pantries.
Hall said CAPECO tracks volunteers and
volunteer hours, and has seen a trend in the
past few years.
“We don’t see new people of the younger
generation entering into volunteering,” she
said. “I don’t know if it’s because people are
See VOLUNTEER, Page A16
Hermiston High graduation to return to Toyota center
HERMISTON HERALD
The Hermiston School Board
agreed at a meeting last week that the
district will once again hold gradua-
tion at the Toyota Center in 2019.
Hermiston High School Princi-
pal Tom Spoo made a brief presenta-
tion to the board, discussing the pos-
itives and negatives of the venue. He
said the new location’s capacity was
one of the biggest benefits, as the
school no longer had to give students
a limited number of tickets for family
members.
“Limiting it to three or four tickets
is not an option,” said board member
Dave Smith.
This year’s graduation at the Toy-
ota Center had about 4,400 attendees,
which equated to more than 10 audi-
ence members for each of the 342 stu-
dents graduating.
Spoo said the main issues with the
Toyota Center were traffic getting
there and crowd management after
students gathered on the lawn to meet
their families.
Ahead of the 2018 graduation,
the school board considered multiple
options, including Kennison Field and
the Eastern Oregon Trade and Event
Center. But those options would have
been more expensive than the Toy-
ota Center, in part because the dis-
trict would still plan to get the high
school gym ready in case of inclem-
ent weather, and would not have held
as many people.
Board members said they did not
need to formally vote on the deci-
sion, but unanimously agreed to hold
graduation at the Kennewick center in
2019.
STAFF PHOTO BY KATHY ANEY
A crowd of about 4,400 people watched the Hermiston High School Class of
2018 graduate last month at the Toyota Center in Kennewick.