Uniforrne
Volunteers
PHOTOS BY GLENN TRIEST
JENNIFER FINER STAFF WRITER
PHOTOS BY GLENN TRIEST
Working the streets
as volunteer police
and firefighters.
Joe Glazer and Jeff
Graff patrol the
streets of Southfield.
1111 ichard Levine, a
Farmington Hills
volunteer firefight-
er, still smiles when
he remembers the
call he responded to
several years ago.
The Lubavitch
Center had a fire in part of the
building. When Mr. Levine ar-
rived and learned there was no
one inside, his first instinct was
to go in and save the Tofahs. Af-
ter unsuccessfully searching for
them, he found someone to ask.
The response: "There are no
Torahs." The center is an educa-
tional facility, not a synagogue.
Although he laughs about this
incident, most of the work he and
other volunteer firefighters and
police officers do is serious busi-
ness.
"I look at what we do as a front
seat in life," said Myron B ord-
man, a West Bloom-
field CPA by
Volunteer
profession and a re-
firefighter
serve deputy with the
Richard
Oakland County
Levine.
Sheriffs Department
"You are there at everything
from births to deaths. Once you
get there, the crowd clears the
way to let you through."
Mr. Levine, who responded to
70 percent of calls that came in
to his station since January, and
Mr. Bordman, who spent about
500 hours with the Oakland
County Sheriffs Department, are
two of the community's many
uniformed volunteers.
Others, like Joe Glazer, Har-
ry Rose, Jeff Graff and Nancy
Kaufman, can be found wearing
a light-blue uniform with the
City of Southfield Emergency
Management Division logo on
their sleeves. Each of them puts
in an average of 10 hours a
month.
This group of volunteers per-
forms a wide range of activities,
from patrolling Southfield's
parks and malls to providing se-
curity, crowd and traffic control.
"It's nice to be able to give
something back to the commu-
nity," said Jeff Graff, who has
been with the Emergency Man-
agement Division for about 14
years. "I find what we do is very
rewarding."
Mr. Levine, who also has been
a volunteer for 14 years in Farm-
ington Hills, runs a manufac-
turing plant which makes metal
stampings for the auto industry.
Most of the calls that come in Oto
his station are not fires or even
life-or-death situations. One of
his runs involved rescuing a dog
from a roof.
"A lot of times older people
with chest pains will call us," Mr.
Levine said. "We get quite a few
medical calls, domestic disputes
and auto accidents."