A volunteer’s life for Samaritan Center’s warehouse manager

Shane Boessen’s job more than doubled in size last year.

The Samaritan Center’s warehouse manager since 2006, Mr. Boessen went from making the best of a cramped 1,500-square-foot space to serving clients from a spacious 4,700-square-foot addition to the center, which opened its current 1310 E. McCarty St. location in Jefferson City in 1999.

“It has made life so much easier,” said Mr. Boessen, a member of St. Andrew parish in Holts Summit. “We were renting space — we had things all over Jeff City — and we were renting trucks from U.S. Rents-It. The travel that we were doing was unreal.”

Mr. Boessen still travels almost daily for work, picking up food donations like day-old bread from local grocery stores — only now the center is able to store it all on-site.

“Now we can get more stuff in, more variety for people,” Mr. Boessen said.

The Samaritan Center is an interfaith agency whose services include food, a medical clinic, a free secondhand clothing closet, energy bill assistance and tax preparation aid.

The center is closed for a week of already scheduled maintenance and is scheduled to reopen on March 30.

When the center is not closed, the food pantry is open to clients 9:30-11 a.m. Mondays through Thursdays and 4-5:30 p.m. Thursdays.

However, the work begins long before that.

Mr. Boessen typically spends his mornings accepting donations and preparing the center for staff and volunteers, who help sort food, stock the pantry and organize the warehouse.

“At 9:15 we all gather around in the pantry to pray,” he said.

After the pantry closes, “at 11:30, usually, we’ll straighten things up, clean things up as far as preparing the next shift of volunteers — most of the time it’s guys restocking the pantry or myself restocking the pantry.”

There’s plenty to do after an average of 65-70 clients come through over a two-hour period, Mr. Boessen said. He might also pick up more food donations or purchase needed items — like toilet paper, for example — in the afternoon.

“It’s always something,” he said. “There’s always something to pick up, always something to bring in — because, of course, whatever goes out the front we have to restock in the back.”

While much of Mr. Boessen’s day job is facilitating volunteer work, he’s also a habitual volunteer himself.

He and his wife, Angie, have three children: seventh-grader Wyatt, fifth-grader Quinton and second-grader Hailey, all students at St. Peter Interparish School — and all involved in sports.

Mr. Boessen volunteers to coach their archery, soccer and baseball teams. He also donates his time and talent in the form of woodworking pieces for school fundraisers and the Samaritan Center’s annual auction.

“I make things out of pallets — benches, chairs, little household things like that,” he said, adding he has also made raised and window flower boxes as well as Adirondack chairs.

“It’s a hobby that I just really, really enjoy doing, and it puts my mind in a different place,” he said.

Mr. Boessen said his favorite part of his role at the Samaritan Center is working with the volunteers.

“And there is knowing that you are helping the clients that are out front,” he added. “(And) because you’re interacting with so many different people on a daily basis, just the unknown of what’s coming up next.”

Mrs. Martin is city editor for the Jefferson City News Tribune (newstribune.com), which published a version of this article on Feb. 23. It is republished here with permission.