A Close- Up Look At People Who Matter : A Non-Paid Pro at Helping Those in Need

For most of four years, when Chip Selby called her family to say she was heading home, she was often met with a combination of disbelief and understanding.

“I’ll say I’m coming home, and before I get up from my desk, four more things will happen,” said Selby, president of the Assistance League of Southern California and a Sherman Oaks resident.

She has often been late getting home from her full-time volunteer job--her term expires in mid-April--but her family has supported her.

Selby said her family was often particularly touched by stories of the many unfortunate people that the league helped.

She said they would want to know about the girl with two fingers chopped off by her father, or the child whose father boiled her arm in scalding water. The troubles of the abused, the neglected, the elderly were among the stories Selby told her children--now all adults--to make sure they understood the importance of volunteering.

“Yes, it is very sad,” Selby said of those in need. “What makes it worthwhile is if you can take something like that and do something positive for them.”

Selby learned the value of volunteering from her mother in her hometown of Beckley, W. Va. “I grew up in a home where I had a lot of love and support from my family,” Selby said.

Shortly after she moved to California in 1982 with her husband, actor David Selby, their son and two daughters, she attended a performance of the Assistance League Theatre for Children in Hollywood. That visit led to a commitment of volunteer.

“If you don’t get a paycheck, a lot of people don’t see the value of what you do,” Selby said. “I’ve never felt that way. I’ve always said that volunteers are professionals too. They just don’t get paid.”

The Assistance League of Southern California, founded in 1919, has about 1,00 volunteers, 185 paid staff and 10 agencies that help 70,000 people a year “from the womb to the tomb,” as Selby puts it.

The league provides clothing for schoolchildren through Operation School Bell, and runs a learning center, theater, foster children programs and a children’s club.

The league also operates the Volunteer Center in Panorama City and offers help for Alzheimer’s patients.

A visitor may think that the league, made up of mostly women volunteers, just holds luncheons. “But they leave here, they don’t believe it,” Selby said. “This is a business, and we’re in the business of helping people.”

With the social problems they deal with, Selby said she often feels that the effort is akin to sticking her finger in a cracking dike.

But she takes comfort in stories such as the 10-year-old abused girl who five years ago was the lead in a play at the league children’s theater. Right after the play, her father was arrested for sexually abusing her.

“Her world was completely destroyed,” Selby said. But Selby said she learned later how much the play, and the adulation the girl received for her performance, helped the child. “Her relatives told us that was what really got her through all that.”

It is the kind of thought that comforts Selby on the way home, wondering how overwhelming the problems can be. “I’m thinking, ‘What am I doing?’ ” Selby said. “But that usually passes quickly.”

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