A Muskingum County resident is spending her retirement years giving back to others both locally and as far as hundreds of miles away through the Red Cross.

Pam Elliott-Dixon retired from Colgate-Palmolive three years ago. She has volunteered most of her life but she found herself spending a lot of time at home following her retirement.

Elliott-Dixon decided to join the Red Cross in July 2018. Since her new volunteer endeavor, Elliott-Dixon has been to three natural disaster zones and aided many people in Southeast Ohio displaced by house fires.

“I’ve volunteer most of my life. I was a volunteer firefighter, volunteer EMT, I volunteered at the hospital, I volunteered in hospice and I’ve always had a passion of caring about people and doing things for people,” Elliott-Dixon said. “… I wanted to get involved in something and, like I said, the Red Cross kind of just came to me.”

In September 2018, Elliott-Dixon was called for disaster relief help for hurricane Florence. She was called again in October 2018 to help with disaster relief for hurricane Michael.

Last month, on March 5, Elliott-Dixon was called again, this time to assist with the disaster left by tornadoes in Alabama. About 24 hours after the call, she arrived in Alabama.

“We rode around to the neighborhoods that were affected by the tornadoes, we met a lot of people and since it had only been a few days (after) the tornado, everything was still raw and new,” Elliott-Dixon said.

In her two previous deployments, Elliott-Dixon had been assigned to help with sheltering. In Alabama, the local churches in the area had taken care of providing shelter to those displaced, so Elliot-Dixon’s assignment shifted to delivering emergency supplies (DES).

Gallery • 4 Photos

Photo provided by Pam Elliot-Dixon taken during her Red Cross Alabama deployment.

During her two-week deployment, Elliott-Dixon rode around and delivered supplies — rakes, shovels, clean up kits, gloves, masks, trash bags and other supplies — to affected areas. The second week, she was stationed at a supplies hub where people could come and get the items they needed.

“It was a really good experience. It was different because we got to go around and actually meet the people who were affected, you know, by the tornadoes, and meet them at their homes,” Elliott-Dixon said. “And the people there were just so grateful and so kind and so caring.”

In her previous deployments, Elliott-Dixon said she had seen many people affected by the disaster in the shelters but she had never seen them amidst their destroyed homes like she did in Alabama.

“That tornado wiped out like whole rows of houses and everything,” she said. “There was even a lake that was sucked dry from the tornado, it was just really, I can’t even describe how bad it was.”

While many of the people she encountered had been tragically affected by a natural disaster, they were some of the kindest people she had met. Many of the people she delivered supplies to asked if they could pay her for the items.

“The people there just were so kind and so, I just can’t even describe how these people were,” Elliott-Dixon said. “It was amazing to me.”

As volunteer for a large portion of her life, Elliott-Dixon, who is an Army veteran, said the Red Cross has given her an avenue to continue to help people both locally and far beyond the Village of New Concord. While every Red Cross member has the ability to turn a deployment down, she said she hasn’t turned down an opportunity yet.

“I’ve always had that passion to take care of people,” Elliott-Dixon said.

To learn more about the Red Cross or getting involved with the Red Cross, visit the organization’s website here.