As heat topped 100 degrees on July 14, Barbara Nelson of Rolling Meadows found her elderly neighbor red-faced and wearing a wringing wet dress. She knew Frances Rezel, 77, needed an air conditioner and was unable to buy one without outside help.
Nelson turned to Rena Trevor, the volunteer director of Rolling Meadows’ emergency assistance program who has helped hundreds of needy people over the last three decades.
By mid-afternoon, Trevor had collected $100 from St. Colette’s Church in Rolling Meadows, $100 from the Salvation Army, $175 from the city, plus $57 from Nelson to pay for the $432 unit.
“(Rolling Meadows) was very helpful,” Nelson said. “They contacted me right away, and (Trevor) was wonderful.”
“If it wasn’t for (Nelson and Trevor), I would have been lying on the floor passed out,” Rezel said. “I was grateful for the help.”
Trevor has been the city’s volunteer welfare officer for more than 30 years. In addition, Trevor, who was instrumental in starting the Women’s Center at Harper Community College in Palatine, serves as Rolling Meadows’ volunteer field representative for the Salvation Army and is active in the League of Women Voters.
Dispensing thousands of dollars of aid to needy families makes the welfare officer also a detective, a counselor, an agency networker, a banker and a fundraiser. And it’s all accomplished with her heart on her sleeve.
“(Trevor’s) a living saint,” said John Connor, Rolling Meadows volunteer assistant welfare officer, who is retired and now serves as a deacon at St. Colette. “I don’t know anybody who’s more compassionate or sensitive to people’s needs.”
Trevor has a heart of gold, said Judy Dixon, the director of general assistance of Elk Grove Township, which includes part of Rolling Meadows. “We just work together to help somebody survive.”
A person’s survival is the bottom line for Trevor, who spends city and Salvation Army funds to help people pay their rent, utility bills or whatever else is needed to get them back on their feet after sudden unemployment, illness or other crisis.
Trevor, 69, estimates she works 20 to 25 hours per week helping people get emergency assistance. Headquartered at her kitchen table, she interviews clients over the phone and verifies their stories and then networks with Elk Grove and Palatine Townships, St. Colette’s and Meadows Baptist Church, Catholic Charities and the Community Economic Development Association Northwest to pool funds. Often she counsels people about how to get food stamps or work.
Last year, Trevor allocated $12,708 of city funds, giving $7,540 for rent assistance to 24 people, $2,292 for mortgage assistance for five people, $2,039 for utilities to 14 clients and $837 for transportation and other needs to three people. She also used $3,300 in 1994 in Salvation Army funds for utility assistance and food.
Trevor’s philosophy is this: “If you help (the needy) one time in a meaningful way, very often it’s all the person needs and they’re back on track. Don’t throw a drowning person a short rope. It’s cruel and a terrible waste of money.”
Trevor was recently named the Woman of the Year by the Business and Professional Women Northwest. The award, given on Oct. 19 in Mt. Prospect, was based on Trevor’s lifetime achievements as a professional and volunteer who has demonstrated leadership and integrity and has worked to improve the community.
Trevor’s more than three decades of volunteerism began in 1963 after she read one of Eleanor Roosevelt’s “My Day” newspaper columns, in which she urged women to get involved with the League of Women Voters. Trevor joined the Arlington Heights/Buffalo Grove/Mt. Prospect chapter of the organization and became its president four years later.
“I loved my kids, but I needed some kind of diversion,” Trevor said. “It changed my whole way of life. I immediately became involved in the community. I joined everything.”
At the time, Trevor, a former journalist, was a stay-at-home mother of four children living in one of the first homes built in Rolling Meadows. Her husband, Bill, was an editor at the Chicago Daily News.
Her volunteer roles expanded in the late 1960s. She became the volunteer vice president of the Northwest Opportunity Center, a Rolling Meadows-based Cook County agency federally funded to oversee anti-poverty programs. At the time, Trevor said, Hispanic migrants worked on truck farms, picking vegetables while living in chicken coops without running water. Trevor coordinated a hunger hike to get food for the area’s needy.
Dovetailing with her concern to ease human suffering, she volunteered as a full-time assistant welfare officer in Rolling Meadows in 1965 and 12 years later became its director. The city, then flush with sales tax revenues, has had an emergency fund for needy residents since its incorporation in 1955.
In the early ’70s, Trevor noted the transition of mature women back into the work force. In 1974, she helped to start and became the first volunteer director of a women’s program at Harper College to aid homemakers returning to school or work. For the next 16 years, she was employed as its full-time director.
Trevor, who was widowed in 1979, also developed a displaced homemaker’s program at Harper for women who have lost their source of financial support because of the death, divorce or illness of a spouse.
“(The women’s program) came at a time when women were going back to work,” Trevor said. “It was very scary for women who needed the training.”
Much of Trevor’s job as Rolling Meadows’ volunteer welfare officer is negotiating the red tape to meet the needs of people.
Corporate manager Tanya Redley (her real name is not being used, at her request) was bedridden because of a debilitating illness, and she could not get help to drive her 3-year-old to preschool or to aid in cleaning, laundry and cooking.
“Nobody could help her,” said Trevor, who networked to collect funds from St. Colette’s, Elk Grove Township and the city. “What the Rolling Meadows fund allowed to happen is to help those who otherwise would not have been helped. It wasn’t all that expensive.”
Redley, whose health is improving, said, “By (Trevor’s) sensitive and personal attention to the case, she was able to cut through the bureaucracy and help me at a time I needed it. I had gone through other agencies, and I got a bad taste in my mouth and it frightened me.”
In the future, however, Trevor’s good works may be in jeopardy. The Rolling Meadows City Council may cut her emergency assistance program from next year’s budget (the final budget will be voted on in December) because of a money crunch and belief that her services are duplicated by the townships.
“We have to go back to the basic city charter of police, firemen and public works,” said Mayor Thomas Menzel. “You can’t maintain the same program levels if we don’t have the money. The township has the charter to do it and is responsible to do it.”
State guidelines, however, restrict townships from paying more than $150 toward someone’s rent, Trevor said. “If they’re delinquent in rent, $150 is not going to help them,” she said. “I think if you spend money to prevent homelessness, you’re really being cost-effective. Once a family becomes homeless, to put the family back on track is an incredible expense.”
According to Judy Dixon, director of general assistance for Elk Grove Townshiip, Trevor is “able to help people . . . who I can`t help. She’s able to help them through the city funds more than we do, especially rental assistance.”
Ed Geiss, Arlington Heights’ human services coordinator who dispenses $18,000 of city funds for emergency assistance, disagrees with Menzel’s assertion that the township is providiing the same services.
“That’s misinformation. There’s no duplication of services, but we do partnerships,” said Geiss, who adds, “Rena is an inspiration to me. She tirelessly works for the advancement of the poor.”
Trevor wants to see the money kept in the city welfare coffers and not transferred to the Police Neighborhood Resource Center in Rolling Meadows, as has been proposed.
“In essence, keeping it as part of the city will continue the tradition of Rolling Meadows as a caring, community-oriented city,” Trevor said. “(The assistance program) was founded by people who moved out of the neighborhoods of Chicago and had a feeling of neighbors caring for each other. That feeling is the bedrock of the city. Spiritually and for the sense of community, it’s such a huge and important cornerstone of the city. Without it, (Rolling Meadows) will just become another suburb.
“We’re talking about people who will be out on the street homeless if we don’t keep (the funds),” Trevor said. “This is no time for the community to become hard-hearted.”
