Tucson volunteer Kathleen Kirk is 'called to help the other'

As a child, she would reach out to the left-out kid, she says; she’d protect her two younger siblings, she’d embrace the sickly child in swim class. As an adult, she’d choose to counsel the challenging high school or college student. “I was never a big person, but I felt big” when someone needed looking after, she says.

At 67, Kirk is still not a big person, but she extends a wide embrace. As her fellow cyclist Brian McQuiston said when this columnist was looking for a retired volunteer to profile: “You’ve got to meet Kathleen Kirk.”

A lot of community volunteerism is particular — the homeless, veterans, the migrant community, or literacy. For Kirk, her cause seems to be less the particular and more the general — the “other” she refers to: people, wherever she encounters them.

There’s an open notebook on Kirk’s dining table. “I keep a watch list,” she says — “a friend support list.” When she hears that someone is sick, or has surgery scheduled, or is otherwise distressed, she enters their name in her book, including “check in” boxes to track her follow-ups.

She’s always been like that, says friend Jill Conway, who’s known Kirk since college. “Kath is empathetic, and really good at listening to what people say.”

Kirk then makes a plan. “Some people talk about it, but she gets it done.”

Kirk’s professional career lent itself to her retirement activities. She “jumped around,” she says —social work, to public health, to health education, finishing up retiring from SALT (the alternative learning support center at the University of Arizona).

Her earlier volunteer activity with the Steele Memorial Research Center gave rise to her current semi-retirement practice: After speaking at a conference she’d organized, she was approached by a participant who begged her to meet with her troubled teenaged son. She realized that she could help in a “different way,” so Kirk hung out a shingle as a family life educator-life coach.

Meanwhile, Kirk has also volunteered for formal organizations — the Sister José Women’s Center, Together Women Rise, Soulistic Hospice.

The Sister José Women’s Center, where she volunteered for four years, serves unhoused women, providing respite, secure sleeping, food, showers, even pet accommodations. The experience was “eye-opening and sad,” says Kirk. And it’s difficult. A resident featured in an “Arizona Illustrated” segment agrees and praises the volunteers. “Can you imagine taking care of a room full of women?” she laughs. “We’re like cats!” Apparently, cats with claws and fangs. Once, when an angry client threatened to kill her, Kirk defanged her by saying, “Oh, I hope not today. I have a lot to do.”

As Kirk well knows, help is not always welcome.

At the recent gathering of another organization Kirk has been a part of — Together Women Rise — she shared an anecdote from earlier that day. For a while, she’d noticed a woman living on the streets alone, often dragging her blanket behind her. This day, Kirk was passing by on her way to Trader Joe’s, so she stopped and asked the woman what she could pick up for her. “Water. Strawberries,” the woman answered.

When Kirk returned with a bag of groceries for her, Kirk suggested that there was a place the woman could go for a shower, a clean bed, clothing and food. Could she drive her there? The woman flew into a rage: She knew those places. “They steal your money!” she exclaimed, “They’re dirty!” And she stormed off.

Since the shelter would have been Sister José’s, which steals no one’s money and is immaculate, Kirk will probably not give up on the woman.

Together Women Rise is a national nonprofit dedicated to international gender equality and female empowerment. Tucson’s is one of hundreds of chapters that fund a common, vetted program and meet monthly to discuss it. The topic of this recent meeting was a project in Peru that provides reproductive and sexual health education to Indigenous women in their Quechua language.

Kirk says she appreciates her “Rise” chapter for its “women who care and really want to share,” who can laugh with her for writing to her legislators regularly and flying to Washington to give Rep. Juan Ciscomani unsolicited advice.

Life situations have altered the focus of Kirk’s benevolence, and she has begun a new phase and new training as a hospice volunteer. In the last year, the deaths of friends and a family member have led her to realize that hospice is a natural way for her to contribute to the community.

And community is Kathleen Kirk — not least, the Lycra community. “Cycling,” she says, “is a big social sport,” in which she engages four or five days a week. But even on a ride, her impulses to check on “the other” kick in. If she sees a homeless person lying off the path, she’ll tell her companions to carry on while she checks on him. “People stop for dogs,” she says, incredulous, “but go right past a person lying on the ground.” Her partner, Cyclefit Solutions owner Tim Carolan, calls her “Sister Mary.”

Now fully trained as a hospice volunteer, Kirk is awaiting an assignment from the nonprofit Soulistic Hospice, but also plans to serve patients and families directly in homes, nursing facilities or hospitals. All, of course, while keeping an eye out for the needy on The Loop.

The world needs all the Kathleen Kirks and “Sister Marys” it can tap.