Volunteer task force will let neighbors help neighbors

Even though the neighbors on Longboat Key can’t get together in person, the community connections are as strong as ever. Several organizations are pairing with the Longboat Key Fire Department to create a network to help each other out during the age of social distancing and staying at home. 

The Volunteer Task Force is coming together as a town-supported endeavor from the Fire Department, Rotary Club, Kiwanis Club and support from the Chamber of Commerce. Volunteers from businesses, restaurants and general residents are creating a network, which will be supported by a phone number put in place by the town, that will be available Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. 

As of Wednesday, April 1, the phone number is officially live and the helpers are ready to take calls. Reach them at 941-316-8702.

“The things volunteers would do fall into categories such as social needs, someone to talk by phone or FaceTime contact, running simple errands on a one-time basis, supplying a book for someone, or picking up simple grocery items,” Kiwanis president Lynn Larson wrote in an email. 

Three “region captains” — Larson, Rotary president Nancy Rozance and Pam Anderson — will field calls directed to them by Tina Adams, the Longboat Key Fire Department's community liaison, and determine what services the resident needs. 

“We've got a lot of people on the island that aren't so tech savvy, so we've got people that have volunteered to get on the phone with them and try to walk them through that,” Adams said. 

Elsewhere, in smaller yet still effective ways, neighbors and friends continue to be just that as life changes in ways unimaginable just a couple months ago.

Larson and her street organized a pickup system for takeout orders from the Lazy Lobster so that only one car needed to go to the restaurant for everyone’s dinner. Residents of Fox Street in the Village organized a Fox Street Family group chat and coordinate their grocery store runs to help out everyone. 

Outside of Country Club Shores, residents encourage each other with upbeat chalk drawings titled the “Doodle Walk.” On longtime Longboat Key Turtle Watcher Freda Perrotta’s 94th birthday, fellow turtle watcher Tim Thurman sang happy birthday to her from a distance, while Sam DeGiammarino and Brenda Lee went over and held up a printed “Happy Birthday” sign safely outside her window so she wasn’t alone.