Four people have been selected as recipients of three 2021 Clallam County Community Service Awards.
Bruce and Kathleen Reiter, Jim Stoffer and Captain-Crystal Stout will receive awards during a virtual ceremony will be at 7 p.m. Thursday via Zoom.
Attendees need to register in advance for the event at tinyurl.com/ClallamCoSA.
This annual award was created to recognize the dedication, sacrifices, and accomplishments of Clallam County people who do extraordinary things for their neighbors, their community or the environment.
Nominations are made by members of the community to the Peninsula Daily News. The recipients are then selected from those nominations by a blue-ribbon judging committee that includes at least one former Community Service Award honoree.
The 2021 awards are the 41st annual, begun by the PDN and now co-sponsored by Soroptimist International of Port Angeles-Noon Club.
PDN publisher Terry Ward offered his personal congratulations to all the honorees “for your outstanding work, which has made a difference — and which has made Clallam County a better place.”
Bruce, Kathleen Reiter
The Reiters “are the perfect example of dedicated volunteers,” said nominator Joe Wright.
Both are amateur radio operators and members of Clallam County Amateur Radio Emergency Services group, which is part of Clallam County Emergency Management, Wright said.
Bruce and Kathleen Reiter. Photo by Keith Thorpe/Olympic Peninsula News Group
Bruce is a previous emergency coordinator and Kathleen is the training officer for the group, providing more than 1,000 hours of volunteer service annually.
“During the past year plus, these two people have practically lived in the Emergency Operations Center helping with all facets of support and help with the COVID crisis,” Wright said in his nomination letter.
Theresa Rothweiler of the Clallam County EOC said that Kathleen Reiter “was the driver behind our mass vaccination clinics held here in Port Angeles … She recruited volunteers for every needed job, trained the volunteers, spent countless hours arranging (and sometimes rearranging) the hours needed to staff the clinics, organized the materials (PPE, tents, tables, breakroom, EMS) needed, organized the layout and flow of how the clinics should work, and countless other needs.
“She is now organizing once again clinics for the vaccination of students 5-11 years old and for the upcoming booster shots that will be available. “
Said Clallam County Sheriff Bill Benedict: “Kathleen also juggles planning for the upcoming Cascadia Rising 2022,” according to
“Her primary effort has been focused on developing scenarios to exercise not only the EOC, but to ensure there are specific opportunities for ARES and CERT team members,”the office said.
You volunteered to be a member of an elite group that responded to aid our community in dealing with this emergency.
The Clallam County Sheriff presented the Volunteer of the Year award to the Reiters for 2015.
Kathleen has ensured that communications systems will be realistically stressed, but to also identify weaknesses in training and equipment, said Sheriff Bill Benedict.
Jim Stoffer
“Jim’s full-time job is to be a volunteer for the Sequim community,” said nominator Patricia McCauley.
Stoffer has served at least two terms on the Sequim School Board, served a chairman of Citizens for Sequim Schools and was president of the Sequim-Dungeness Chamber of Commerce in 2019-2020, she said.
Jim Stoffer. Photo by Keith Thorpe/Olympic Peninsula News Group
He is active in the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Olympic Peninsula, working the summer lunch program each week in Carrie Blake Park and was elected to the Clallam County Charter Review Board in 2020, she said, adding that he was a member of the Sequim Irrigation Festival board.
“Jim’s dedication really went into high-gear with the food distribution during COVID,” McCauley said.
“This program distributed food to around 400 cars, twice each week for at least six months at the Sequim Methodist Church. Jim was always busy working the event but also getting the word out through social media to all those in the area who might need help,” she said.
He also volunteered at the vaccine distribution at Carrie Blake Park, she said.
”Jim is not looking for recognition,”McCauley said. “He is retired Coast Guard and realizes if he wants to improve our community, he needs to get involve and help solve problems, not sit back and let someone else do the work,” she said.
Captain-Crystal Stout
Captain-Crystal Stout “has touched so many lives is such a positive way with her special ADA hot air balloon and her role as a participant in our community, said nominator Patricia Davis.
She started the Dream Catcher Balloon Program in Sequim in 2012 and raised money for a hot air balloon that gives people who are in wheelchairs to sit and fly.
As executive director of the nonprofit Chrysalis, she and her team have provided the experience to almost 3,000 people.
“Captain-Crystal and her PTSD therapy dog Lucee-Light have traveled outside of Clallam to the Shriners Hospital of Salt Lake City, Utah, where they carried 35 children from their beds to the balloon …”
They gave free rides to people in Las Vegas, Nevada; Albuquerque, N.M,; and Boulder and Loveland, Colo., Davis said.
In Sequim, she gives rides to veterans each Veterans Day, participates in the Olympic Peninsula Air Affaire and Port Angeles Airport Days.
Her dog assists her in hanging Christmas lights.
She was nominated for the citizen of the year and business of the month awards and is an ambassador for Sequim and Port Angeles.
