Three Decades at 2 a.m.
In 1991, Jane Emanuel signed up to do something most people would not volunteer for: answer a crisis line through the night. The Contra Costa Crisis Center's 24-hour hotline connects callers in the worst moments of their lives — veterans in suicidal distress, parents who have just discovered their child is in danger, elders isolated and afraid — with trained volunteers who have made a promise to pick up the phone, no matter what hour.
The 2014 Crisis Center Annual Report gives a measure of what that work involves: 33,426 crisis calls answered that year alone, including 8,780 from veterans, 2,814 from people at immediate risk of suicide, and 161 cases where a police rescue was required. Volunteers — Jane among them — logged over 6,500 hours. She was part of those numbers for every year since 1991.
When Diablo Magazine honored her at the Threads of Hope ceremony in 2014, NBC Bay Area's Jessica Aguirre asked what kept her coming back. Jane's answer — three words, spoken quietly — landed in the sold-out theater at the Orinda Theatre like a definition of everything the work requires: "Listen, hear, reflect." Not solve, not fix, not advise. Listen. Hear. Reflect.
That discipline is harder than it sounds and rarer than it should be. For more than thirty years, Jane Emanuel has practiced it, shift after shift, call after call, for the people of Contra Costa County who needed it most.
Impact & Legacy
Over three-plus decades Jane's volunteer hours at the Crisis Center represent one of the longest continuous volunteer commitments in the organization's history. Her financial support alongside Roger — documented in the 2017 and 2018 Annual Reports — adds a sustaining donor dimension to her volunteer role. She has been a constant in a safety net that tens of thousands of Contra Costa residents have quietly relied on.