For the past 18 years, Pat Patterson has been a steadfast Saanich volunteer who puts her love for driving to use to help people who are disabled and elderly in Victoria.
Patterson has loved cars for as long as she can remember. Before her brother died, Patterson would see him spending countless hours rebuilding a 1932 Ford. Patterson remembers “all those old cars that his friends had. I loved the old-style car,” she said. Their father was also a Vancouver Island Coach Lines mechanic who had a scrap yard filled with dead cars.
Growing up, Patterson recalls being in an abusive family and her brother being the one who made her feel safe.
“He kind of became my protector,” Patterson said. “But when I was 13, he was killed in an explosion. I felt alone again.”
For years, Patterson was in and out of hospitals, receiving over 90 ECT treatments to treat her depression which ultimately left her with a seizure disorder and unable to work.
It was when Patterson’s elderly mother got sick, who she “loved very much,” that Patterson first became inspired to start volunteering. Seeing her mother struggle to get her needs met made her think about other people who might be in the same situation.
“I could get her wherever she needed to go, but I started thinking about people who couldn’t get somewhere and that got me thinking on it,” Patterson recalls.
When you first meet Patterson, she comes across as a genuine, gentle soul, easy to talk to and with a smile that lights up her face. She confesses she used to be shy and to “not having any social skills” at the time she first enquired about volunteering, but she felt very welcomed by the Saanich Volunteer Services Society. “It was like I knew them already,” she said.
Patterson soon became hooked in the spirit of volunteering, helping the society out as a medical driver, companion shopper, food bank hampers delivery, companion visitor and more.
Patterson is now 70 years old, and she does her volunteer drives once a week with her husband Charlie. When Patterson recalls their love story, it sounds like something out of a beautiful movie. The couple first met in their teens as patients in the hospital when she was 18 and he was 15.
The two went their separate ways upon leaving the hospital but would continue to run into each other throughout the years.
When Patterson was 21, she fell in love with a man named Fred, and they were together for 20 years until he passed suddenly.
Patterson remained alone until five years later, when something incredible happened.
“It was the fifth anniversary of my first boyfriend, Fred, dying. I went for a walk … and all the way downtown I was thinking, do I really want to get involved with someone again seeing the way the other one ended? And I thought, the only other guy that I ever really had talked to was Charlie.
“So, I go downtown and over in the corner of the parkade was a fuel truck and across the top of it was written “Freddie”. And I thought, hmm, maybe he’s saying go for it. So, I walk downtown, and when I come back, I look at the sign of the fuel truck and it says “Angel Fuels”. And all of the sudden, ‘honk honk’, and Charlie shows up. True, true and all true … It couldn’t be any plainer. It was meant to happen.”
Today, they are a volunteer power-couple. Patterson does the driving and her husband does the lifting. “It’s a lot better with someone else. You know, it goes faster. It’s easier. And it’s good for him, whether he knows it or not,” she said laughing.
The members of the Saanich Volunteer Services Society have many glowing things to say about her. “Pat is an amazing volunteer, generous person, and is dedicated to helping others,” said Mario Siciliano, executive director in an email. “She is a gem,” said another member of the organization.
Originally Patterson told Charlie they would stop volunteering once she reached the 20-year milestone, but when she realized she had already reached 18 years this year, she asked him if they should still quit at 20.
“He said keep going.”
She was relieved to hear it. She doesn’t want to quit, at least not yet.
“I started scared to death and now I’m scared to stop,” she said.
