WHEN a West Vancouver police officer knocks on a front door to deliver news that will shatter a person's life, it's the volunteers in the Victim Services unit that are there to immediately start picking up the pieces.
The little-known corps of 31 volunteers, headed up by coordinator Bunny Brown, is now in its 18th year of reaching out, literally and figuratively, to those who have been traumatized by violence, the sudden death of a loved or another great loss - even those who were simply witnesses to an awful event.
Two Victim Services volunteers are on call for 12-hour shifts, 24 hours a day ready to be dispatched to a crime scene or the home of a victim. Last year, police called on their services 88 times.
"One of my beliefs is I'd rather be called and not needed than to be needed and not called. It's OK with us if they call us at 3 a.m. and, all of a sudden, they don't need us," Brown said. "My favourite slogan is 'Be there when being there is all that's needed."
When Brown or one of the volunteers makes contact with a client, the first task is offering emotional support, which largely entails validating their emotions - anger, sadness, confusion - and letting them know they have a right to feel that way.
"It sounds like it's not that crucial but it really is. That short-term emotional support is just as vital as someone in a car accident getting immediate medical support because if you don't have someone there to validate what you're going through you can sometimes feel like you're losing your mind," Brown said.
Indeed, a person struck by the sudden shock of grief may become forgetful, even of extremely important things, while processing the loss. Years ago, Brown accompanied a constable to do a death notification for a woman whose husband had been killed in a car accident.
"We were informing the wife of her husband's passing, and I know they had children and pets, and I said to her 'What time do the children get out of school?' and she panicked and said 'Oh my god, I have to pick the kids up from school,'" Brown said. "She wasn't focusing on her regular day-to-day things because there was something else that had taken place."
VS volunteers stick by their clients in the early hours after an event to help with the practical things, making sure they're taking their medication, helping them contact family and friends for ongoing emotional support and helping them get their footing for the next steps.
Having a VS member present helps more than the client, it's often critical for the officer on the scene. As a former beat cop and member of the Integrated First Nations unit, WVPD spokesman Const. Jeff Palmer has been tasked with death notifications several times.
Not only is it hard to be the bearer of the worst news possible, the officer must also take care of police business, which is not the same as offering comfort, Palmer said.
"It's very, very difficult. The best way to describe it is this: You can't make it better for the person, but if you handle it in the best way possible and with the support of a Victim Services person there, you can prevent it from becoming a lot worse," he said.
"Obviously we feel the human need for these people to be supported, but we have specific investigative needs that we have to deal with so this allows us as officers to focus on the investigative side while having the comfort of knowing the human side is taken care of."
Once the immediacy of the crisis is over, the Victim Services folks stay in contact to help with the challenges that lie ahead. If someone has been the victim of a crime, a volunteer will assist them as the case winds through the court process, which can often feel like being victimized again. They help the victims understand each step, which can be baffling to an outsider. Volunteers also attend funerals in the name of "being there" which clients often find comforting. Because of the harrowing nature of loss and victimhood, the relationship can go on for a year or more.
"You end up sometimes being like a lifeline and you don't want to sever that lifeline until you know that they're OK and moving forward," said Judy, a West Vancouver VS member. Volunteers are only ever addressed by their first names.
Regardless of training or life experience, there is no way to predict how someone in trauma will react and any number of things influence that. Culture is a big one.
Diane, another longtime VS volunteer, was once tasked with trying to placate and restrain a Chinese-Canadian woman who came home to discover her husband was dead. The woman desperately wanted to throw herself onto her husband's body, which is not permitted while police are awaiting the B.C. Coroners Service to arrive and investigate.
"It wasn't until later on in the week when I spoke to her daughter that I found out the reason why she was so distraught. In that culture, the spirit is still with the body and you should be there. We weren't aware of that. A lot of things come into play," Diane said.
Today, the unit has volunteers fluent in Farsi, Cantonese, Korean, Polish, German and Dutch.
Once VS has made contact, they often find they're only scratching the surface when much deeper help is needed, Brown said
"There are always other things involved. Nobody has this idyllic, perfect life and all of a sudden, whoops, this one thing happens to them," she said.
Officers once called Brown to the scene of a break-and-enter, which was strange as VS workers are rarely dispatched for minor property crimes. When she arrived, the victim was sitting on the couch, nearly catatonic. Brown spent the next three hours, gently encouraging her to speak.
"She finally started talking to me. The first thing she saw when she walked in and opened her bedroom door was that all of her underwear had been taken out of the drawer and thrown around her room. This woman had been sexually assaulted when she was in university and it just brought it all back," Brown said. "The more we talked, the more we realized she never got a lot of support or a lot of counselling following that sexual assault. It was kind of just left there. She was carrying that around with her."
The group also ends up being the first to help when emergency services are dealing with at-risk youth, seniors with dementia, or people with mental illness.
While they aren't counsellors, VS volunteers can get their clients linked up with a myriad of services, depending on their needs and what is available. But resources are limited, government programs lose funding and disappear and sometimes, for all their efforts, there just isn't the right kind of help available, especially when the victim or traumatized person suffers from mental illness or poverty.
"There are people who are living on $212 a month and can't pay their bills and can't buy groceries," Brown said. "We have those frustrating situations where there's not enough resources in some areas."
"And this on the North Shore. This is in West Van," Diane added.
To a layperson, this is a staggering task - attempting to console the inconsolable and putting one's self in a stranger's nightmare. But for the special kinds of people that are called to do the job, it comes with great satisfaction.
"It's extremely rewarding work. It really is. . . . It is a privilege to be with people when they're going through probably the worst time of their life. You feel very honoured to be there at that time," Brown said. "But until you've experienced that, you don't realize that."
Once, while comforting a distraught woman whose husband's dead body lay just few feet away, Diane felt something most would call counterintuitive.
"I sat with her on the floor with her husband and just held her hand, stroked her back, talked with her about her husband and I came away thinking, what a privilege that was for me to have been, at that time, with her when nobody else was there."
But sometimes there is a price to pay. The VS team, for all their composure in the face of distress, can't help but take the hurt home with them in some cases.
After taking a particularly difficult phone call from a client while at the West Vancouver police headquarters, Diane put the phone down as a constable walked by and saw her in tears.
"She looked at me and said 'Victim Services need Victims Services sometimes too, don't they?' I said 'Yeah, that's why we
have one another," Diane said.
There's also Trauma Bear, a giant teddy bear donning a police cap in the Victim Services office, who's always available for a hug, which even officers have been known to take him up on.
Brown and the rest of the team welcomed the newest members to Victim Services at a graduation ceremony on Wednesday night.
To make the cut, the volunteers were screened based on their readiness for the task and the skills they could bring. They then had to complete 60 hours of classroom training covering a range of topics including property crime, sudden death, suicides, the court system, mental health, and cross-cultural training. Once the class work is done, the volunteers start shadowing other more experienced volunteers and do a ride along with a police officer before they're ready to start as a back-up VS volunteer in the field.
The type of people the program attracts is as diverse as the calls they respond to, Brown said. Some are young folks looking to get experience that will help them into a career in policing or social work. Others have had first-hand experience dealing with VS after a tragedy in their own life and want to pass along the favour to someone else.
"But the largest percentage are people who want to go to a volunteer job where they feel they are actually helping," Brown said. "I think a lot of people in the program are chronic volunteers. Some of them have two or three different volunteer positions that they do, but this one seems to be one people really relate to and feel they're contributing with."
The province and the District of West Vancouver cover the team's budget, which covers one full-time staff position, one part-time assistant and the team's training and resources.
They do accept donations via the West Vancouver Foundation but only to cover registration fees at training events.
But sadly, or perhaps appropriately, most people have never heard of Victim Services or the work they do until there's the police officer knocking on their door, Brown said.
Without the humanitarian desire to give of one's self when a stranger in the community is in need, the program would not be possible.
"Remember, these are volunteers. People who do this on their own, not because they get a paycheque," Brown said.
That fact is still baffling to the police who rely on them. "We never stop being amazed," said Palmer. "It's like, 'Oh my god, you could be relaxing at home, and you're volunteering to come out and provide this.' It's kind of boggling that people are willing to do that and it's an amazing resource.
