Paula Stokes is pictured at the Van Buren Township Food Pantry in Milford, where she volunteers weekly. Stokes has a history of volunteer work, starting in 2011 when she assisted the tornado-ravaged community of Joplin, Miss. She even had an opportunity to help out in a house-building project run by “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.” Photo by Lilli Dwyer.

By Lilli Dwyer
InkFreeNews

MILFORD — Paula Stokes is a lifelong Milford resident who graduated with the very last class of Milford High School students in 1968, then moved on to Ivy Tech classes on a fascinating new device: the early desktop computer.

“I was very interested in writing computer language, so I took a lot of classes to that. I was almost on the ground line of getting computers first in an office setting. I worked for United Telephone Company, and my first computer was huge, it took up almost my whole desk. And then I got very interested in software. … In the end I was a financial analyst working with a lot of capital budgets and I did a lot of software training for other employees,” Stokes recalled.

What she most enjoys about computers is the power that they afford to users.

“I think I have an analytical mind. I like Excel a lot, you know, writing formulas and getting the computer to do more of the work and me less of the work,” she explained.

Through her 39-year career with United Telephone Company and raising four children, she stayed extremely busy. It wasn’t until 2011, when an EF5 tornado hit Joplin, Miss., that her history of volunteer work began.

Stokes’ oldest daughter was living in Joplin at the time. When she flew there to be with her daughter, she saw an opportunity to help the ravaged community.

“You just go and you do what’s needed to be done. … When you see someone who has lost everything, it’s kind of hard to wrap your arms around that, because we are so blessed in this community,” Stokes said.

She would end up returning to volunteer in Joplin eight times. On one memorable trip, she joined over 10,000 other volunteers in an effort to build seven houses in seven days, all while an “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” camera crew filmed the whole endeavor.

Stokes is not a builder and helped out by distributing food and picking up trash, but she did get to meet the show’s host, Ty Pennington.

“He’s funny, actually, he’s very funny. Very upbeat but at the same time kind of down to earth. He went through the crowd, talked to people, shook their hands and asked them where they were from. That kind of surprised me,” she remarked.

When she returned home, Stokes decided she would continue her new pastime. She and her husband started delivering for Mobile Meals in 2011 and are still driving the same route today.

She also belongs to the Milford Kiwanis and became involved with Riley Children’s Hospital after her grandson was a patient there. When local service organizations round up donated items for the Riley kids, Stokes is one of the people who deliver them to the hospital.

For the past three years, Stokes has volunteered at the Van Buren Township Food Pantry in Milford. She said she’ll sometimes serve 10 or 11 families a week there.

“This is a great asset to the community, I think. Because even though it’s Van Buren Township, we don’t turn anyone away. If they come in and they say they need food, we will give them a box of food and let them know what services are in their area. I enjoy working with the people here. And you see all ages. … Bottom line is everybody has to eat,” she said.

Stokes is motivated by a long-held belief in helping others, one that was taught to her in early childhood. She explained, “my parents lived through the Depression. Especially my mother, so often she was hungry as a child. She would tell us about some of the things they would try to do, collect pop bottles just to get food on the table. … And that was kind of ingrained in me, I think, that it was just the right thing to do to help someone who was less fortunate than you.”

Getting to know the families who use the food pantry and hearing their stories stokes the same fire within her, one that drives her to keep helping.

“Here, you get to know the people and their families, and maybe what struggles they have, whether it’s a job or medical or something else. They kind of open up to you and I like that part, just getting to know who they are and what they’re going through,” she said.

Outside her volunteer work, Stokes’ great passion is her flower garden. The only thing she can’t figure out yet, she said, is propagating succulents.