The People You Meet

Political campaigns are a great place to meet people. You’re surrounded by a hopeful and enthusiastic crowd willing to give their time to a cause that’s greater than themselves.

Yet it’s also true that campaigns are busy and have time constraints that make your focus narrow and short term. There’s always a new dragon to slay, and sometimes all you care about is whether the guy next to you has a sword.

What else there is to know gets lost in the crush.

Vince Iturbe

Vince Iturbe is one of our reliable soldiers. New to political campaigns, he’s here entirely because he was impressed with Ben’s performance as his State Senator.

Beyond that, Vince is an unassuming bachelor living a quiet retired life.

What I just told you is all I knew about Vince, and honestly, about all I tried to know until recently. What was getting harder to ignore was the warm and kindly influence he brings to our office.

Therefore, I did what passes for a background check and Googled his name. Not a lot popped up, except a citation from Community Nursing Services that named him national volunteer of the year. It said that during the last 27 years he had given over 2,500 hours of volunteer time.

Soon thereafter, at the West Valley Parade, I bumped into Vince, told him what I had Googled up and asked him about it.

Initially he tossed it off as an honor not sought, and embarrassing to accept. But when I pressed him he said that his time as a volunteer with CNS is spent tending to the terminally ill. He helps them and their families prepare for the near term inevitability of death by putting their affairs in order and offering support and advice.

“It all started nearly thirty years ago,” he said, “when my priest asked me to visit a man dying of AIDS. He was all alone in a house emptied of everything but a mattress and a blanket. There was hardly anyone even willing to walk through the front door. And the rest just followed on after that.”

This is the rest of Vince’s story, or at least a larger part of that story.

As I said, political campaigns are a great place to meet people. Being able to rub shoulders with this kind of grace and decency is one great reason to stop by and put your name in our volunteer log, in a column right next to Vince Iturbe.