Family fights disasters

For as long as Maddie Silverthorne can remember, her grandmother was someone who, at any given moment, was there for those affected by tragedy.

“If we were at a family dinner and something happened, she’d have to step away,” she said. “Of course it was really sad, but I wanted to be part of it. I wanted to be there for somebody.”

Her grandmother, Wendy Silverthorne, spent 20 years volunteering with the Trauma Intervention Program of Portland and Vancouver. The regional organization trains civilian volunteers to provide emotional and practical support to victims and family members affected by traumatic events in the first few hours following the tragedy.

Mostly, that translates to meeting with family members whose loved ones have died in traumatic situations such as a homicide, suicide or car crash.

“They support people on basically the worst day of their lives,” Wendy Silverthorne said. “They do good things for people.”

So when Maddie was old enough, she took the two-week training herself, and at the age of 14, she became a volunteer in the TIP teen program.

Teen volunteers have the same duties as the adult volunteers, though tend to respond to more incidents at schools and never go to a house or scene without an adult.

The main goal for TIP volunteers is to listen and be a support to those who are hurting.

“They really are just trained to be there,” said Jordan Johnson, TIP crisis team manager. Johnson said that of the 180 volunteers in Multnomah, Clackamas and Clark counties, about 25 are teens.

She called the teen program invaluable not only for the volunteers, who get real-world hands-on experience, but also for the people they are helping.

“It’s easier for a peer to talk to a peer than it is for a 15-year-old to talk to a 60-year-old sometimes. They can understand each other,” Johnson said.

Now a high school senior, Maddie has spent four years volunteering with TIP. All of the Vancouver teen’s calls have taken her to schools to help students affected by tragedies such as the death of another student or a fire that burned their classroom to the ground.

She learned to keep an open mind and that everyone grieves differently.

Younger children, she said, like to draw pictures, while middle schoolers tend to write letters. Some people want to talk, while others prefer to sit in silence. You cannot judge someone on how well they knew the person who died, Maddie said, because you never know what that death triggered for them.

When she sits with a grieving student, Maddie just does her best to be what that person needs.

She said she never says, “It’s OK,” or “I understand.”

“I have to remember for myself that I wouldn’t want someone saying that to me. I would never want a stranger coming up and saying, ‘It’s OK, I know what you’re going through,'” she said. The fact is, “you don’t. You’re not that person, you can’t feel their feelings.”

Some calls have been heartbreaking, she said. One call put her in the aftermath of the death of a child who was the same age as her sister. Another call was in response to the suicide of a student, and she heard from countless of his classmates that they didn’t see the warning signs. She, too, had a classmate kill himself, and she never saw it coming.

“A death is a sad thing,” she said. “But watching somebody else that’s hurting, watching them get uplifted, that makes it easier for sure.”

The grieving isn’t over, she said, but “you can see a little bit of weight lifted off their shoulders,” she said. “When you have that flip in the conversation, you can tell, all right, they’re going to get through the rest of the day, they can go back to class now.”

Each time she volunteers, Maddie decompresses in the same way she sees many others decompress — by talking. After each call, she debriefs with a supervisor, another TIP volunteer or her grandmother.

“The debrief gets you through it, talking to people gets you through it,” Maddie said.

Maddie said she’s gotten a lot from her time volunteering. For example, the outgoing 18-year-old gets shocked looks from people when she tells them that she used to be shy. She said that TIP also helped her find her career path. She has applied to nursing schools and hopes to attend the University of Northern Colorado next fall.

“It has been fun to see her grow up and come into her own,” Johnson said. “She’s very level-headed, calm and collected. She has a good personality that can mesh for anybody, and she’s never been afraid to jump in and help people.”

Volunteering for TIP is almost like a family business, though not everyone contributes in the same way.

Maddie’s mother, Malia Silverthorne, said that she took a one-day TIP training herself, but quickly learned it wasn’t for her.

“I just know that I’m much more of an emotional person, and I know I wouldn’t be able to provide the support that my daughter and my mom provide,” she said.

She said she helps out now by volunteering for fundraisers, directing people in crisis to TIP and acting as a support for her daughter and mother.

Malia Silverthorne said she didn’t worry about her daughter joining TIP because she said that Maddie turned out more like her grandmother than her mother.

“She can be supportive and have feelings about something, but it’s not going to consume her,” she said. “She’s going to be able to move and continue on into her daily life.”

Maddie said that she encourages others to volunteer for TIP, adding that the experience is a rewarding one.

“Somebody’s having the worst day of their life and you get to see them take a step forward,” she said.