Marianne Mueggenburg has done it for nearly eight years, Dennis Bruns for four and Wayne Mikesell for 14.
The three longtime volunteers handle non-emergency calls at Sacramento County sheriff's service centers in Carmichael and Arden Arcade.
"I enjoy being a volunteer," said Mueggenburg. Before helping at the Carmichael service center, she was a volunteer for 9½ years at an area television station, where she answered a consumer hotline.
"The most important things to me are my family, my church and my community," the 71-year-old Carmichael resident said.
Every week, she volunteers for four hours at the sheriff's service center on Manzanita Avenue near Cypress Avenue in Carmichael. She also donates two hours a week for a missing persons unit at another sheriff's facility on Garfield Avenue in Foothill Farms.
"Most of the people who come into the service center have a problem, and you do your best to help them and to make them feel better. It is like going to the dentist," Mueggenburg said.
The retired property manager, who also is the Carmichael center's director, said she is one of 30 volunteers there.
Most service center volunteers are retired and, when handling calls, they take advantage of each other's knowledge.
"A person might have a question on property management, so the volunteers come to me, and if there is a medical question, we go to our retired nurses," Mueggenburg said.
Sheriff's Capt. Don Devlin, who heads the north patrol area, including Carmichael, said the budget crunch that led to July's consolidation of the Northwest Division and the closure of the sheriff's station at McClellan Park shines a light on the valuable role volunteers play in the sheriff's office and the community.
"They are the neighbors of the people they are helping," Devlin said. "A lot of times people feel more comfortable with the service center volunteers than with sworn officers."
Devlin heads a force of 170 sworn officers who cover an area stretching east to west from Orangevale to Elverta and north-south from North Highlands to Carmichael. In that same area, 78 volunteers work in three service centers.
Since volunteers are not sworn officers, they can only take reports of "cold crimes," such as burglaries and vandalism where suspects have left the site.
But their work is still crucial, said Lt. Lou Fatur of the sheriff's North Central Division, which includes the Arden Arcade service center on Marconi Avenue near Fulton.
The Sheriff's Department manages the free help through a program called Volunteers in Partnership with the Sheriff, or VIPS. In addition to taking crime reports, the service center workers check on homes and businesses when people are on vacation. They do fingerprinting. And in hope of discovering a pattern that might lead to an arrest, they go through pawn shop receipts.
"They are invaluable tool for us. Their reports are critical. They could ultimately … help solve a murder case," Fatur said.
"They are at a lower level of investigation, but they are still part of our team," he said.
Michelle McKown, office manager for the Marconi Avenue service center who oversees 31 VIPS participants, said each volunteer undergoes a background check and takes as many as three levels of training, depending on his or her job.
Lower-level training covers topics such as domestic violence, elder abuse, service center orientation, zoning and code enforcement, crime prevention and report writing, she said.
Higher training levels include defensive driving, traffic control, explosives, two-way radio procedures, crime scene investigation, missing persons cases, cardiopulmonary resuscitation and search-and-rescue efforts.
McKown said she never comes up shorthanded, largely because she has an unusual staff of volunteers.
"I have one from every generation," she said. The youngest is Seth Pine, 19, and the oldest is 84-year-old Merritt Miller.
Miller, a retired California Highway Patrol officer, also volunteers at the Carmichael service center.
"One lady works full time and volunteers four hours a week," McKown said of Jennifer Kennedy.
"These people impress me," she said. "I am amazed they are here," she said.
Dennis Bruns, a 62-year-old retired construction worker, said what he started four years ago as a way to keep busy has turned into a volunteer job that gives him great satisfaction.
"Where I work is really rewarding," Bruns said of the Carmichael service center.
He works four days a week, five to eight hours a day. On any given day, he takes reports over the phone about vehicle thefts, restraining order violations or identity thefts.
"No two calls are the same," Bruns said.
"What we are doing are things that keep law enforcement on the streets where they belong," Bruns said.
Wayne Mikesell, 77, started at the Arden Arcade service center in 1994 after reading in the newspaper that the sheriff needed volunteers.
"My mother always told me if you see a need, try and fill that need," Mikesell said.
Over the years, the retired California Department of Transportation administrator said, he has learned that victims of crime, even small crimes, don't take their victimization lightly.
"They consider it serious, so you have to handle it seriously and professionally," he said.
At the service center, Mikesell can be found on the phone while typing notes in a computer. He's there for four hours one weekday morning and four more on another afternoon.
"I have logged in 3,500 hours of volunteer time," he said.
Call The Bee's Ramon Coronado, (916) 321-1013.
