EVERETT — It was August 2005, the days after Hurricane Katrina.
Steve Taylor watched the images of flattened homes, flooded neighborhoods and human anguish from his TV set in Gold Bar.
Somehow, some way, he wanted to help.
When he read a blurb in the newspaper about a need for American Red Cross volunteers to head down south, Taylor drove to Everett to sign up. He figured he’d pack his bags and take off.
As it turned out, it took time to process papers for the new recruit.
Instead of working on the front lines, Taylor stuffed envelopes in Everett and became the master of the office copy machine. He churned out handbooks for classes preparing people to go to the storm-battered stretches of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi.
“I was starting to wonder if I would ever get called,” he said. “I would come in every day. I just kept making more handbooks.”
Taylor eventually did get his call. He spent several weeks in Mississippi, came home for 10 days, and took another assignment to New Orleans for several months.
Since then, it has been one call after another. He’s learned to use a computer, got his first cellphone and become a frequent watcher of the Weather Channel.
Red Cross missions have taken him to areas hit by flooding, hurricanes, tornados and wildfires. He’s been from Alaska to Florida and many states in between. He’s witnessed the aftermath of Hurricanes Sandy and Dolly and tornados that ripped through Greensburg, Kansas, and Joplin, Missouri.
He has spent more than 900 days deployed after disasters. That’s the equivalent of more than two years helping after catastrophes and sleeping in tents, warehouses and cut-rate hotel rooms.
Earlier this year, Taylor was given the Glassberg Award for lifetime achievement through the American Red Cross of Snohomish County. He missed the event. He was in Texas helping out after flooding.
Taylor, 64, is a funny man with a long white pony tail that reaches well down his lower back.
He is retired. Ask him what he did for a career and he’ll explain that he was “a jack of all trades and a master of absolutely nothing.”
Ask him how long he’s been growing his hair and he’ll say “since the day I was born.”
For the record, his last haircut was July 2, 1976. At the time, he figured he wanted to look good for the bicentennial so he went to get a haircut. The stylist layered his hair. It looked fabulous for a day, but not so much afterward. Taylor went out to buy a baseball hat and has shied away from stylists since.
It would have been hard for Taylor to imagine 10 years ago that he would still be a Red Cross volunteer a decade later. He had several preconceptions he’s since discarded.
“I thought the Red Cross was a bunch of suits,” he said. “I got to meet a lot of people and realized it was not a bunch of suits. They were everybody from every walk of life.”
He enjoys the camaraderie he feels in deployments with hundreds of strangers drawn together to work toward a goal of providing relief.
“It is the largest dysfunctional family you will ever run into,” he said.
It is a family that draws close, often in cramped quarters, and then heads its separate ways.
Sometimes he has reunions with old friends he’s met along the way helping in another crisis in another state.
Early on, Taylor was on the front lines of disasters.
When he was called to Pearlington, Mississippi, 40 miles east of New Orleans, after Katrina, he drove a food truck filled with hot meals and juices.
“The town was gone,” Taylor said.
Every home or business was damaged or destroyed. People were living in tents or under tarps. He watched people wheelbarrow soggy possessions out of what was left of their homes.
Taylor found satisfaction and meaning in his small role. He’d talk to the locals, many who insisted that he help others before themselves.
Taylor has seen the best in a lot of people over the years.
“It’s like you see the guy who lost everything and they say, ‘Give it to somebody who needs it,’” he said. “The whole United States is that way.”
It was that glimpse into human nature that led him to stay on in Mississippi after Katrina. He figured he could serve as a bridge between people coming and going.
Over time and different deployments, Taylor developed an aptitude for logistics, getting what was needed and making sure it reached its intended destination quickly.
His skills and passion to help were tested in the spring of 2014 when disaster struck way too close to home.
Taylor didn’t need to board a plane when a mudslide killed 43 people in Oso. Taylor worked out of an office in north Marysville.
“I loved being on the front lines, being the go-between,” he said. “However, there was a need.”
That is one of Taylor’s greatest strengths, said Chuck Morrison, director of the Snohomish County chapter of the American Red Cross. Taylor is good at whatever he is asked to do and helps unconditionally.
“He doesn’t say, ‘No,’” Morrison said. “He is willing to do what no one sees. He works exceptionally hard and he goes anywhere we ask. And he doesn’t leave until it’s all done.”
These days, Taylor has been on the road again.
This time, he crossed the Cascade Range to help with wildfires in Eastern Washington.
When he’s done, he’ll head back to Snohomish County for his twice-a-week shifts as a volunteer in the Everett office.
“The Red Cross is not always about deploying,” Taylor said. “It’s about helping out at home. Ninety-five percent of what we do is at home, is working in your community, helping locally.”
For the loyal volunteer, that includes taking inventory, ordering supplies and stuffing envelopes.
“I still do it and I still get paid the same, too,” he said with a chuckle.
Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446; stevick@heraldnet.com
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