Thank you to our VIC Volunteers!

Happy holidays and thank you to our Visitor Information Center Volunteers! Each year all VIC volunteers gather to share the spirit of the Holidays and to celebrate the commitment they have for each other with friendship and enthusiasm as we start another New Year.

This year our Volunteers of the Year are Sue Corrigan and Kay Passensky! As Lori Lou Waddell, the Chamber's visitor information specialist put it...

“If tenure was the only prerequisite for being recognized for an award at the Visitor Information Center, our next two recipients would have earned a place at the podium many, many years ago, but, length of service is only one component of being a Super Hero Volunteer.

Our volunteers wear so many hats during the course of one day…they are navigators, referral sources, community supporters, historians and problem solvers for thousands of guests every year.

Our award winners are best of friends, who together with purpose and aplomb, have been making their annual snowbird migration down to Naples since 1998…that’s 20 years of commuting and communicating on our behalf.

They are both retired from individually notable careers as educators, and maintain that teaching and education, at all levels is the corner stone that prepares us for our own distinct life journey.

With the sincere desire to help our visitors with information about Chamber members and meticulous details about Collier County’s history, I know that Sue Corrigan and Kay Passensky are the perfect choice for this year’s volunteer of the year award.

We congratulate and honor our dual award winners, for their 20 years of volunteer service and their voice to ensure that Collier County continues to be the best place in American to live, work and visit."
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We know that the impact of volunteerism is so significant, to those doing it and those receiving it, that we can’t accurately measure it, and, it is for this reason that the benevolence that unites us for the good of others is so important.  The ROI on volunteerism is simply too big to tabulate with numbers alone.

We have a lot to be thankful for…and the annual list of volunteers who deserve applause for their dedication as a VIC Volunteer is yet another example.

This year, we congratulate and recognize Hildegard Carney, Peg Connors, Myron Johnson, Carol Pribble and Gayle Rose for their 11 years of volunteerism.

Congratulations to our volunteers who have served for a span between 18 to 24 years at the VIC, and they are, in alphabetical order:  the afore mentioned Sue Corrigan and Kay Passensky with 20 years, Ethel Ferraro (18 years), Mary Liz Fronmuller (21 years), Jack Kaufman (22 years) and Pat Peters (18 years). 

And a special thank you to Mary Lou Connone, who celebrated 25 years of volunteerism with us last year and raises the bar and inspires all of us.

Including all of our volunteers, this year we logged in a total of 439 years of service dedicated to educating our visitors about all of the fun that is waiting, just around the corner for them, in Naples and Collier County. 

We have a powerful and positive image of Naples to uphold and we are proud and grateful that we get to do it with each of our wonderful and committed VIC Volunteers!