Celebrating Our Incredible Volunteers

Recently we celebrated the greatest volunteer-driven campaign in Monterey County history with parties on the Peninsula at the Ol' Factory Cafe and the Hilton Garden Inn, and in Salinas at the Pizza Factory. In Salinas, Shawn "Bigger! Better!" Bagley came up with the idea of staging a tableau representing the whole campaign - and here's the resulting photo, with a great guide to what it all means supplied by Marjetka Bagley:

"On the left you have a reenactment of our visibility rallies - the young woman above Shawn's fist along with her mother behind her on the left were typical of people who came in to buy Obama gear and stayed for the rest of the campaign - they were great. The woman holding the handmade 'pueblo' sign is Olga Reyna, our SUPER DOOPER queen of all volunteers. To the right of Olga is Jyl Lutes (who ran for City Council and won) standing in front of our 'representative door' in cardboard with our door hangers on it, showing our GOTV effort. Tucked in the back there by the "door" is Patty Saenz who coordinated our candidate campaigns.

"Shawn (in front) is sitting next to Ed Weinstein in front of our Obama Store reenactment, showing our Obama gear for sale. At the table is Bettye Pina with a megaphone showing our street efforts for all those weekends when we had our 'yard sales' in front of the campaign office. The lady in red is Kathy Parker, an extremely dedicated volunteer who is a big part of our Social Outreach agenda. The UNITY signs on the wall came from the convention and were part of the office décor along with the framed Obama poster next to them.

"The table with the computer monitor signifies our phone bank and data input volunteers: Rosemary Perez (data input), Eric Quigley and Ben Morales (phone bank coordinators). Between Eric and Ben is our youngest phone banker, Kyle Groves (holding a cell phone) who was an inspiration to us all and came dressed in suit complete with Christmas tie yesterday - my kind of guy! Next to Kyle and right behind Ben is Don Pendergrass (with the microphone) who was our jack-of-all volunteers and our resident musician - he put together a band for election night and is doing it again for our Inauguration festivities. Directly behind Don is a Hawaiian-shirted arm belonging to Pat Egan, our successful candidate for Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital Board.

"The big 4x8 Obama sign on the wall with the long paint roller denotes our sign painting project, and we have a couple of students there with brushes and paint. The guy with the clipboard in front is Don Chesterman representing our voter registration efforts - he was one of our office volunteers who showed up out of the blue and stayed. The woman to the right of him is Teri Vasconcellos who was the absolute key in running our campaign office - she was there every day all day and was instrumental in getting the volunteers there. And last but not least, at the far right is the food service team: Sally Pruneda, Lynne Sergius-Briscoe and me replete with our standard plates of chicken and bucket of candy."