A Vietnam Rescue Became 4,516 Hours of Michigan Casework

Tom Robinson logged 4,516.25 unpaid hours with the American Red Cross in Michigan, enough for a President’s Volunteer Service Award lifetime medal.

Jim Seay, a Navy veteran from Morley, added a gold medal for 517.5 hours in 2023. The Michigan Red Cross named both Service to the Armed Forces caseworkers on April 29, 2024, with letters prepared for President Joseph Biden Jr. Robinson first met this work in Vietnam, when a Red Crosser walked into his outpost with no weapon and a message that his father was ill.

Two Michigan Veterans Cleared the Presidential Hour Bars

AmeriCorps, working with Points of Light, runs the President’s Volunteer Service Award. Adults 26 and older earn gold for 500 or more unpaid hours in a 12-month stretch, and the lifetime medal starts at 4,000 hours across a whole career. Seay cleared gold by 17.5 hours in a single year. Robinson cleared the lifetime bar by 516.25 hours, counted through 2023 across 19 years.

Each honoree received a congratulatory letter and an official pin, plus a customized certificate and a coin or medallion. Those pieces are the public mark. The hours are the labor count on a job that does not stop when a ceremony ends.

THE HOURS AGAINST THE AWARD BARS

Robinson’s early Red Cross years mixed disaster work with SAF casework one day a week. He answered home fires, drove an emergency response vehicle, and deployed for Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma and Tropical Storm Ernesto. The lifetime total folds all of that in, then keeps going through the military-family caseload that became the center of the job.

About 10 Caseworkers Cover Michigan’s Military Families

Robinson and Seay belong to a Michigan SAF team of about 10 caseworkers. They are the local follow-up layer, not a two-man national switchboard. Hero Care’s own figures put more than 700 calls a day on a network of more than 18,000 volunteers and 350 employees, and the American Red Cross says it assists more than 240,000 military and veteran families a year through SAF and International Services.

Michigan still has a large veteran community for a team that small. State labor-market analysis drawn from Census Bureau American Community Survey figures puts about 435,500 veterans living in Michigan, 5.4 percent of civilians 18 and older, the 13th-largest veteran population in the country. The Michigan Red Cross serves more than 9 million people across 83 counties from six chapters. Volunteers make up more than 90 percent of that region’s whole workforce, disaster and blood work included, not SAF alone.

THE LOAD AROUND THOSE 10 DESKS

• National call volume: Hero Care lists more than 700 calls received daily, a different count from the 240,000 families assisted each year.
• Speed of cases: 77 percent of cases are completed in six hours or less.
• Who staffs the line: more than 18,000 dedicated volunteers and more than 350 employees, with Michigan’s SAF casework team listed at about 10 people.
• Who lives here: about 435,500 veterans in Michigan, plus active-duty households that use the same emergency path.

A national 24-hour intake center takes the first shock of those calls. Local caseworkers then pick up the family, the command, and the loose ends that a single phone shift cannot close. That split is why a gold-year total of 517.5 hours can sit on one Morley volunteer without meaning he personally answered every Michigan case.

How a Family Emergency Reaches a Commander

Families often assume a commander can act on a relative’s phone call. The command still needs a verified record, and the Red Cross is the group chartered to verify an emergency for military commands. Leave itself stays with the command. The caseworker’s product is a packet a commander can trust.

Linn Hughes, a Hero Care Network volunteer with the North Texas Red Cross since 2018, put the job in one line in a July 2026 Red Cross post: “We help make sure they have the correct information so decisions can be made quickly.” New programs that copy that pipeline would spend money on a function that already exists. The scarce resource is people who will sit with a family after the first message goes out.

THE PATH OF AN EMERGENCY MESSAGE

1. The family files: A relative calls, uses the Hero Care tools, or starts a request so the network has the service member’s name, rank, branch, and unit.
2. The facts get checked: Caseworkers confirm the event with a hospital, a doctor’s office, a funeral home, or another independent source.
3. Command is notified: The Red Cross sends a verified message to the service member’s command, including ships at sea and units whose location is not public.
4. Leave is decided: The command and the service member decide next steps, including whether emergency leave is granted.
5. The family is not dropped: Local caseworkers follow up, and Hero Care can route eligible travel or hardship needs to the branch aid societies.

The same path covers a death, a serious illness, a childcare or elder-care collapse, or a money emergency. Robinson, by his own count, has helped “thousands” of families on it. Seay would not give a number, only that “it’s a lot.”

A Red Cross Walker Found Him in Vietnam

Robinson is an Eaton Rapids resident and a volunteer in the Mid-Michigan Chapter in Lansing. He retired from the Army as a first sergeant in 1993 after, he said, “Twenty-five years, six months and 18 days.” The scene that still runs his calendar happened decades earlier, on an outpost, when a man in jungle fatigues came down the road with no rifle.

I was at my outpost, and I saw this guy coming down the street with a jungle hat, jungle fatigues and no weapon. I said, ‘what is this guy doing out here, in the bush, no weapon, no gear whatsoever. The closer he got I saw that he had a Red Cross emblem on his hat.

Tom Robinson, retired Army first sergeant, American Red Cross Michigan

The walker was looking for Thomas Robinson Jr. His father was ill, and they had to get him home. Robinson went back to his base, called his mother, and kept the memory. More than 50 years later he still describes that visit as the reason he treats soldiers, and the Red Cross, as a duty of respect.

“If I ever would be in control of soldiers, I would treat them with respect and dignity. Same thing with the Red Cross,” he said. Families in an emergency, he added, often do not know where to go. “I said this is what I’ll do and provide soldiers, veterans (and their families) with those resources. That’s what I’ve been doing ever since.”

The field walk is gone. The function is not. Someone still has to turn a family crisis into a message a command will act on, then stay on the line while a soldier tries to get home. Robinson said a military background helps him explain that machine to people who have never served. “This is what keeps me going, besides my wife, Jo Elaine. It keeps me active, and I’m getting new information every day.” When Lansing stands up a veterans shelter or an event, he writes it down so he can hand it to the next veteran who needs a place to go.

Seay Walked In After Golf Season Ended

Seay lives in Morley, about 45 miles north of Grand Rapids. He served in the Navy from 1961 to 1965 in a naval tactical data systems unit that tracked combat ships, then spent 31 years in computer sales. In retirement he played golf, joined the American Legion Honor Guard, volunteered with the local fire department, and worked 13 years as a paramedic. He and his wife, Linda, also ran a party store at night and on weekends.

In 2006, after golf season ended, he walked into a Red Cross office and asked what he could do. The April 2024 announcement caught him heading into his 18th year. He started, like Robinson, on mixed disaster and SAF work. The job later narrowed to SAF casework only.

I like that we are providing a really great service for these families. You are making sure the T’s are crossed, the I’s are dotted, and everybody has been communicated with. Command is making the decision on what to do for leave for the service member and we have been in communication with the family about next steps.

Jim Seay, Navy veteran and Michigan SAF caseworker, American Red Cross

He credits his mother, “the angel of the neighborhood,” for the habit of showing up when someone needed a bed or a sickroom. On the Michigan team he is blunter about the standard. “We’re a unique group,” he said. “We all do the same thing. It’s got to be as dedicated as any (SAF case work) unit in the country.” He also said the obvious part out loud: “I wouldn’t be doing it, if I didn’t enjoy it. We’re helping people in a real time of need.”

A gold year of 517.5 hours is not a ceremonial sprinkle of Saturday shifts. It is a weekly habit that survived a sales career, a store, a firehouse, and a golf calendar, then replaced them.

The Charter That Makes Verification Official

The medals can look like a local volunteer prize. The underlying task is written into the Red Cross’s relationship with the federal government. The organization is an independent charity with the legal status of a federal instrumentality, charged to operate the official humanitarian link for service members and their families, verify urgent home-front emergencies, and put validated facts in front of commanders who decide leave.

Red Cross history pages date the first congressional charter to 1900 and the founding to Clara Barton in 1881. Service to the Armed Forces work is described there as running with U.S. forces since 1898. The charter page is just as clear about money: the Red Cross is not a federal agency and does not receive regular federal funding for this duty. Public gifts and some fee-based services pay the bills. The people on the Michigan end of the line are, in large part, unpaid.

Every new U.S. military enlistee, Hero Care says, now gets a Red Cross briefing before the first crisis, under a “Get to Know Us Before You Need Us” program that collects family contacts in advance. That is the modern version of the jungle-hat walk. The method is a briefing room and a database. The need is the same: when minutes matter, the command cannot guess.

No Restart Date for the Presidential Medals

The hardware Robinson and Seay received sits on the far side of a freeze. AmeriCorps put a temporary pause of the award program in place on May 27, 2025, at 5 p.m. The official award site says orders and new certifying-organization applications are not being accepted, accounts are closed to certifying groups during the pause, and there is no date for a restart.

WHAT THE PAUSE CHANGES

• New medals: No new President’s Volunteer Service Award orders are being taken until AmeriCorps says operations resume.
• Old orders: Orders placed before 5 p.m. on May 27, 2025, were still to be processed and shipped.
• The casework: Hero Care’s 24-hour line, the volunteer listings, and the Michigan SAF caseload are not the paused program.

In 2026 the national Red Cross was still naming Hero Care volunteers in public and still sending regions to brief units. The Red Cross of Georgia used a September 2026 post to point families to a case in which the Boyle brothers got home after their grandfather died. The verification job did not wait on a pin.

Some officials tried to fill the recognition gap on their own. After the pause, Texas state Rep. Vikki Goodwin said her office issued special certificates and Capitol flags to young volunteers who had already earned the hour marks. That is a substitute trophy. It is not a second Hero Care Network. The Michigan hours already on the books for Robinson and Seay do not expire because the ordering portal went dark.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the Red Cross Grant Military Emergency Leave?

No. Commanders grant or deny leave. The Red Cross confirms the emergency, sends a confidential report to the command, and can then help with travel or money through the branch aid societies if the service member is eligible. A family call to a unit, without that independent check, leaves a commander with no verified record.

How Do Families Reach the Hero Care Network?

The Hero Care Center takes calls at 1-877-272-7337 around the clock. Families can also start and track a request online, download the free Hero Care app, or text GETHEROCARE to 90999. People overseas can use a free web-calling option the Red Cross lists for locations outside the continental United States.

What Hours Earn an Adult a Gold Volunteer Award?

For adults 26 and older, gold requires 500 or more unpaid hours in one consecutive 12-month period. Stipend programs such as AmeriCorps or the Peace Corps may count toward a lifetime medal of 4,000 or more hours, but they do not count toward annual bronze, silver, or gold. Recipients must be U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents, and political lobbying, religious instruction, and serving only one’s own family do not qualify.

Who Can Request Hero Care Help in a Family Emergency?

Red Cross eligibility lists cover active-duty members, members of activated National Guard or Reserve units, and their immediate families. Hero Care caseworkers also help eligible service members, retirees, and family members seek emergency financial aid from the military aid society for their branch when a crisis includes a money problem, not only a death or a hospital stay.

In Eaton Rapids, Robinson is still collecting names of shelters and veterans events for the next family that does not know where to stand. In Morley, Seay is still crossing the T’s on messages a command has to believe. The medals in their houses record a finished hour count through 2023. The next death in a Michigan military family still needs someone to pick up the phone.