Full Circle Giving

By Anna Kumor, Red Cross Communications Volunteer

From blood donor to plasma recipient to Red Cross volunteer, Carol Freeland embodies the full circle of the Red Cross experience.

Her journey is not just one of service, but of survival — and gratitude that fuels her every day at the Red Cross office in Camarillo, where she serves as the Regional Lead volunteer for the Front Desk Team.

Carol’s work begins long before a volunteer answers their first phone call or greets someone walking through the door. Every new volunteer’s name arrives on her desk, and from there she listens, guides and matches people with the roles where they’ll feel seen and useful.

She takes care to check in with them often to make sure they like what they are doing because, “happy volunteers keep coming back.”

You can hear the smile in her voice as she describes the people she meets. Retirees eager to move after decades at a desk, volunteers who prefer lifting boxes to paperwork, or helpers with paint on their clothes and energy in their steps. Carol helps each one find their place in the moving parts of a local Red Cross office.

Though she leads the front desk, Carol is rarely still herself. She lives on a boat with her husband in Ventura Harbor, rocked every night by the tide. Their life together has sailed through Ohio reservoirs, Hawaiian shores and finally to Ventura, a place that feels at once peaceful and alive.

But Carol’s most difficult calls came not from the sea, but from the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when public health guidance was still unclear.

“We had all been sent home,” she says. “And my home is a boat, so it’s very close quarters.”

When she reflects on those days, she remembers the fear coming through the phone — people who were homeless, people with nowhere to wash their hands, people with no masks, no information, no sense of what tomorrow would look like.

“They were panicked,” she says. “They would ask, ‘Where do we go? What do we do?’”

It took time, but eventually she helped connect people with supplies and agencies that could serve them. Every call became an act of compassion, a lifeline stretched across uncertainty.

Carol’s commitment to helping others began long before the pandemic. She had been a regular blood donor for years until 2014, when a rare autoimmune disorder suddenly interrupted her life. She could no longer donate. She could no longer give in the way she once had.

Instead, she became someone who needed help.

“During the time I was in the hospital, I received a lot of plasma,” she says quietly. “A lot.”

Those anonymous gifts, ones from strangers she will never meet, helped save her life. And once she recovered, Carol felt something settle deep in her heart.

“I felt like I needed to give back,” she says. “So when we moved here, I thought, ‘I’m going to volunteer with the Red Cross.’”

Since then, Carol has done far more than answer phones. She has installed smoke alarms during Sound the Alarm events. She has helped service members connect with family during heartbreaking moments. She has helped deliver food boxes from one community partner to another to serve people facing hunger. She has built a library of resources to guide anyone who calls the front desk. She has supported, encouraged and uplifted new volunteers, one welcome conversation at a time.

Carol’s adventurous spirit and dedication to service shows in her voice, where she is more than someone who answers the phone. 

She is proof that giving does not follow a straight line — it moves in circles, connecting people who help and people who need help.

Carol Freeland received help when she needed it most. Now she offers that same compassion to others, every day.

Carol is giving back, full circle.