Riverside Retiree Saves Lives from Cancer and Provides Comfort from the Driver's Seat

George Read, 80, of Riverside, was more surprised than anyone when presented with the American Cancer Society 2013 Spirit Award. As a Road to Recovery volunteer who drives cancer patients to treatment two to four times a week, Read is just doing what he loves with the same energy and resilience that marked his 53-year teaching career and his own bout with cancer. Lack of transportation is a major obstacle to cancer patients completing treatment. With treatment lasting months and sometimes years, family and friends often can’t drive their loved ones, who may be too ill to drive themselves or take public transportation. The American Cancer Society’s Road to Recovery program is a lifeline to those patients, but many more IE drivers are needed. A month after retiring from a 34-year career as a vocational education teacher at Ramona High School Read went back to teaching part time for another 19 years, helping countless scores of adults earn full high school diplomas. “Just before I retired the second time I saw an ad for the American Cancer Society,” Read says. “I was looking for something to do and as a cancer survivor volunteering came naturally.” So less than a year after his December 2011 prostate cancer diagnosis Read became a Road to Recovery volunteer, driving cancer patients from Beaumont, Bloomington, Corona, Hemet, Moreno Valley, Murrieta, Ontario, Pomona, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Upland to treatment, sometimes as far away as City of Hope. Each of the 110 rides he provided in 2013 averaged 70 miles, a journey he mostly makes in his 2013 Ford Escape. “But if I get a really hip young person sometimes I’ll take the Mustang,” Read confides. “It’s a pretty jazzy yellow convertible with a white top. It’s really good for patients. And the patients are really good for him. He says he’s never heard a single “poor me.” He and his patients often develop close relationships even though he may drive them only a few times. “When I tell them I’m a survivor they want to talk. I don’t think they have a chance to talk to too many people who understand what they’ve been through.” Those relationships surpass age and language. Read’s closet patient friendship was with a monolingual Chinese couple whom he drove from San Bernardino to Loma Linda six or seven times. “The wife was the patient and the husband accompanied her,” Read said. “They’d buy me lunch at the hospital cafeteria. “It’s a great feeling. I really get jazzed about it and drive as much as my coordinator will let me,” he says. ”I don’t want to burn you out,” his coordinator, Dwayne Zappe, also a volunteer, tells him. Read drives his patients both to and from treatment and waits at the facility in between. An avid reader and outdoorsman, he often settles under a tree with his iPad. If the patient is receiving chemotherapy, which takes longer, he goes to lunch and might run a few errands. Read’s energetic volunteer schedule doesn’t impinge on his equally energetic leisure time. He and his wife of 58 years, Norma, take eight weeks’ vacation each year. “We’re not rocking the chair too much and we don’t want to be,” he explains. “It’s too easy to sit in the recliner.” The couple often trailers their boat or wave runner to Lake Havasu and they travel to Oregon a couple times a year. Summers include a cross country trip to New England, the mid-Atlantic or Appalachia. At home, Read flies remote control airplanes, maintains 1.5 acres of landscaping and is an accomplished scroll saw woodworker. “But I have a real passion for driving patients,” he says. “We have so many patients we can’t fulfill the ride requests each week. I’d like to see more drivers.” The American Cancer Society needs many more IE volunteer drivers age 18 – 82 with an insured vehicle in working order. Volunteers are needed for as little as two hours a month. For more information about how to volunteer visit cancer.org or call 800-234-2345 24/7.