In less than two years, Carol Anderhaggen has gone from occasional Red Cross of Rhode Island donor to acting as the person in charge of all computer operations following the crash of EgyptAir Flight 990.
When Carol retired after 28 years at South Kingstown Junior High School, she was looking for something fulfilling to do.
“I needed to do something that had meaning, something that would grab ahold of me,” said Carol, a librarian/media specialist at the junior high school until she retired in June 1999.
One area that always held a special interest to her was computers and technology. She's proud of the success the school had in giving computer exposure to kids who had never really had much.
Carol became a volunteer with the Red
Cross rather incidentally. She stopped by the office to donate
following a disaster.
After looking around, she decided to volunteer. Since that time,Carol
has been a whirlwind of activity, working in Red Cross
shelters, responding to fires, and taking a leadership role among
the corps of Red Cross volunteers.
Her computer experience first came into play when she was in Virginia to do mobile feedings following Hurricane Floyd. The call went out for help with the computer systems, an assignment Carol knew fit her skills set. So she did what came naturally: she volunteered to work in computers.
Since then, she has undergone extensive Red Cross computer operations training. She said the experience has proved educational. "In school, you put the computers in one place and leave them there," she said. "It’s different in the Red Cross. You have to move them whereever they’re needed, sometime on very short notice. You definitely have to be flexible."