Michael Spencer: Still Hearing the Call to Help
By Stephanie Kriner
Peter Tehen and Michael Spencer reconnect while helping victims of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina
It’s easy to understand why American Red Cross alumnus Michael Spencer has returned as a volunteer for the disaster relief organization after a 7-year separation. As he speaks about his memories in the field, his voice almost always seems to be on the edge of laughter. Michael, who is 42, began working for the Red Cross in 1996 as a swim instructor when he was just 14 and did not leave until he was 35 in 2017 after taking on multiple volunteer and staff roles. Today, he still radiates a genuine and contagious enthusiasm for the Red Cross and its work.
Yet, sometimes, if you listen closely enough, you can hear the painful pauses, the part where tears instead of joy are kept at bay -- like when he talks about a man who he watched day after day walking on the same debris pile in Western North Carolina in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, where Spencer had arrived on October 4, less than a week after catastrophic flooding swept away entire mountain towns.
Spencer asked the man if he needed anything and was told that he was looking for his parents, who were in their house when the river washed it away. “After a couple of days, he asked me if I thought their bodies would be found,” Michael says, and this is when he stops speaking for a moment, almost as if he can’t go on. In the silence, he catches his breath. Then, he adds, “I had no idea how to respond. One hundred-year-old trees with 8-foot diameter trunks did not make it; they had been splintered down to match sticks. But I told him that I’d seen lots of miracles in disasters.”
Michael was not exaggerating about what he’d seen. After working as a volunteer or employee at more than 100 disaster operation sites in his tenure at the Red Cross, he has experienced the kind of miracles that can emerge when the dust settles, or the waters recede. However, as he spoke to that man, he had flashbacks of the families who lost loved ones in a very different kind of disaster, and he did not know whether to feel hope or grief. “He kind of reminded me of 9/11 in New York City where so many people looking for lost loved ones posted signs about them all over the city.” In the end, Michael, then just 19 years old, learned that none were found in the massive destruction of the World Trade Center towers.
This juxtaposition between hope and grief lingered around Michael in the wake of Hurricane Helene as he worked as a volunteer shelter manager at a high school in Bakersville, North Carolina – a place where he saw the Red Cross reunite families but also met people in shock over missing loved ones, destroyed communities and deaths. Stories of both heartbreak and joy pour from him almost seamlessly, his voice shaking with excitement one moment and cracking in distress the next.
He talks about volunteer firefighters cutting a hole in the ceiling of their station to escape flooding, children dying from hypothermia, strangers hugging him at a gas station and the many clients in his shelter who were on Oxygen tanks and likely unable to return home until after Christmas when electricity might be restored to their homes. Then he zeros in on the woman he met who did not know whether any of her neighbors had survived because her entire community was washed down the river as she swam away.
“She did not know who made it or who lost somebody in her apartment complex. She just had a valve put in her heart and asked, ‘How was I so lucky? I even had to swim back and get my medicines, but all my neighbors washed away. Why me?’” Michael says. “We don’t have answers for those questions. So, I just said, ‘Why not you?’” It is just the kind of response you might get from a guy who desperately wants others to be okay.
As he tells stories like this one, it is easy to see the kind of positive energy he must have given to the people of Western North Carolina. “It was amazing, probably one of the best deployments in my life because I could just help and get back to the mission,” says Michael, who prided himself in listening to and getting to know all the clients. “It was important for me to know their names and stories, what time they got up for breakfast and how they liked their coffee,” he says.
He also made it his mission to bring some fun to the shelter. For example, he had glow sticks, something he always brought to shelters in his former years at the Red Cross. He would hand them out to children, who had sword fights as the lights went out, a rare opportunity for them and their parents to escape the stress of the disaster. At the shelter for Helene survivors, though, the clientele was mostly older adults. So, he told them that the glowsticks were magical wands for sweet dreams as he wrapped them around their wrists. “They were wearing them for days afterward and said thank you every time I came by,” says Michael.
Unfortunately for both Michael and those who benefited from his compassion and energy, his time in North Carolina came to a disappointing and unexpected end. When the shelter nurse could not manage to help all 30 of her immobile patients get to the bathroom and beds, Michael started carrying them for her, often rescuing those who had fallen due to weak legs or who had wandered off due to dementia. Then, a COVID outbreak hit the shelter, and Michael caught it from one of these residents.
He does not dwell on the misery of COVID, though. What hurt him most was abandoning the people he was there to help. “I hated it because I loved working in that shelter and loved those clients. I wanted to see them move on to the next step in recovery.”
Hearing the Call at a Young Age
Michael, who now works as a Microsoft 365 consultant and lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas, always knew he wanted to be there for disaster survivors. When 9/11 hit, he was a freshman at the University of Arkansas. He already had years of Red Cross volunteering experience helping fellow Arkansas residents who were victims of house fires and tornadoes. Despite having just entered his freshman year in college, he signed up and deployed to the Pentagon and then New York City as soon as he could get a plane. In New York, he stayed for 14 months, working in public affairs at the Family Assistance Center at Pier 93.
“That’s where I really fell in love with the work the Red Cross does and got to see how the Red Cross can pull together so many resources when so many are affected. The power of everyone coming together after these large disasters is incredible,” he says.
“No other organization can bring care and comfort to so many so quickly.”
Throughout his college years, Michael worked at the Disaster Operations Center or DOC (now the Disaster Operations Coordination Center or DOCC) during summer and holiday breaks from classes. He also worked remotely as a disaster reserve employee, responding nearly constantly to larger disasters, including the December 2004 tsunami and Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma in 2005. “The Red Cross was the love of my life for a long time,” he says to explain how he chose to respond to Hurricane Katrina over finishing the final course he needed to graduate.
Following his 2005 hurricane deployments, he moved through a variety of roles and promotions at Red Cross Headquarters, including overseeing public relations messaging, a stint as a pandemic planning coordinator, and various management roles at the DOC, where he was instrumental in helping to solve and troubleshoot large, complex disaster responses, and acting as a liaison between the different lines of service and government partners.
“It was nice. I got to jump in wherever they needed help, so I learned fast,” he says.
Eventually, Michael joined the Red Cross IT team as a Microsoft SharePoint solution architect and helped to spearhead efforts to build cloud-based systems to improve situational awareness and empower workers and volunteers to collaborate and share information in real-time to make data-driven decisions, dramatically increasing the organization’s ability to rapidly provide disaster relief and recovery assistance.
“It’s a virtual disaster operations center where people can contribute, and it has become very important for the Red Cross to not only have boots on the ground but also hundreds of volunteers collaborating virtually to assist with disasters across the country,” explains Michael.
Witnessing the Red Cross’ Transformations
Incredibly, Michael got to witness the impact of his IT work during the Helene disaster operation. Just during the first three weeks of the Red Cross disaster response in North Carolina, virtual reunification volunteers responded to more than 8,000 requests from people seeking to reunify with lost loved ones. This virtual network was especially important there because on-site volunteers could not always knock on doors or make phone calls due to the vast destruction of mountain roads and lack of cell and Internet service in the remote highland areas. However, the virtual volunteers scoured shelter records and damage assessment reports and reached out to hospitals, police departments and other organizations to find the missing.
He also saw how his work resulted in instant access to a full range of services when new clients registered with the Red Cross. “Shelter workers have full access to register clients on tablets and phones and can meet their needs almost instantly,” says Michael, adding that clients might be greeted at their shelter cot by a mental health or spiritual care volunteer or receive help filling prescriptions.
In addition to the changes in disaster relief brought on by his own contributions to the Red Cross’ IT capabilities, Michael lists the many other ways the nonprofit has adapted and improved its response, especially considering the intensifying and more frequent disasters due to climate change. For example, the Red Cross now partners with other organizations to meet an expanding and adaptable array of needs in innovative ways. In North Carolina, this has meant partnering with organizations to meet the specific needs brought on by Helene, such as bringing four-wheelers, heated yurt-style tents, emergency home repair supplies, propane heaters, camping stoves, carbon monoxide detectors and smoke alarms Just during the first three weeks of the Red Cross disaster response in North Carolina, virtual reunification volunteers responded to more than 8,000 requests from people seeking to reunify with lost loved ones. This virtual network was especially important there because on-site volunteers could not always knock on doors or make phone calls due to the vast destruction of mountain roads and lack of cell and Internet service in the remote highland to people isolated without power in the mountains, according to Michael.
“The Red Cross has empowered case workers to look at roadblocks and to help with those particular roadblocks,” Michael says as he recalls a story he heard from another caseworker about a man who had been couch surfing when the hurricane hit. Once the Red Cross learned that he had lost his id and, therefore, could not find a job, the organization provided him transportation to the Department of Motor Vehicles and paid for him to replace it. “Two days later, he had a place to stay, and a couple days later, he had a job,” Michael says.
Here to Stay
Despite the noticeable changes within the organization he loves, it is obvious that Michael and his approach to disaster relief has not changed too much. When he was 29, AtURBANMagazine published a story labeling him a hero for his work with the Red Cross. It’s clear that his status is the same. Whether physically or emotionally lifting people up, Michael knows just what to do to save the day. “Showing disaster victims care and support from all of America and all those who donated is such a privilege,” he says, deflecting any credit toward others. “It’s an honor because everybody wants to help, but I have the skill set and training.”
Naturally, Michael does not spend much time talking about himself. Instead, he prefers to brag about the very people he has helped, including the resilience of the people of Western North Carolina. He points to how many people did not even start asking for help there until three weeks after the hurricane when snow began to fall in the mountains. Then he zeroes in on another story, this one about a woman in her 70s who had been sleeping in a tent outside her house when he met her. “The main thing she wanted was more pallets to put under her tent. She said, ‘I have everything I need, so go help the people who lost everything,’” Michael says, adding. “I had to take a step back and say I hope I am in the same mindset at 70.”
It is easy to assume that Michael will be very much in this mindset when he reaches that age. He slept on the floor at the shelter, went without heat and coffee (“Not having coffee was the hardest part,” laughs Spencer), and worked extraordinarily long hours. He jokes that the disaster work took its toll on him in a way that did not faze him when he was younger. However, he does not look or sound a bit worn down from the experience.
Michael, who is now virtually volunteering as the mass care chief on the Red Cross Missouri/Arkansas Flooding and Tornado Disaster Response, also can’t help but gloat about the organization he first fell in love with as a young teenager. Again, he uses a story of somebody else to explain his passion. This time, he thinks of Rhonda, who went to grab towels to stop the approaching floodwaters seeping under her door as Helene’s rains drenched the highlands. Within seconds, she realized towels would not be enough. She and her child had to swim to dry ground to save their lives.
“She cried when she told me about how she had lost hope and thought that she could not go on but that when she saw the Red Cross on the ground, she knew things would be OK,” Michael says and, again, for a moment it is unclear whether he is about to hold back a chuckle or a tear. Then, his words gush out, and a smile brightens his whole face. “Oh my gosh, she reminded me that the Red Cross is a beacon of hope for all these people.”
