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Home > Archive > Oct 11, 2007

Hands That Serve, a Heart That Cares
By Cami Cox
Staff Writer
When it comes to serving others, St. George resident Rocky Newby has a soft spot for children and animals, but this kindhearted woman will serve wherever she is needed.
“She's the kind of person who, if she heard that someone didn't have a coat, a coat would appear on their doorstep,” said Washington County Children's Justice Center Director Patricia Sheffield. “If there's a need, she just quietly goes about filling it.”
Newby has been a volunteer at the Children's Justice Center, where possible child abuse victims are taken to be interviewed regarding the crimes allegedly committed against them. During the five years she has volunteered at the CJC, she has worked to aid that organization in any way she can. She recently retired from her position on the CJC Friends Board but still helps the organization in an unofficial capacity, serving wherever she is needed.
“I just do odds and ends for them now,” Newby said. “They know they can call me whenever, because I can't quite let go.”
In addition to serving children at the Justice Center, Newby has used her philanthropic skills to serve international youth through Mothers Without Borders, an organization based in American Fork, Utah, dedicated to alleviating the suffering of orphaned children throughout the world.
Through Mothers Without Borders, Newby spent three weeks in the African country of Zambia earlier this year, teaching hygiene classes and skills workshops and providing care for impoverished African children. The focus of the organization's work is not to change the children's culture or push Western ideas on them, she said, but rather to empower the kids to have hope and make changes in their own lives and environments.
“They want to better themselves,” Newby said. “They don't want to leave their country and go to America and have wonderful things – they want to make their country good. So it's just a great organization.”
Many of the African children speak enough English that volunteers are able to communicate with them, Newby said, though in some villages an interpreter was necessary in teaching the workshops. In instructing the children and serving them, Newby quickly came to love them and looks forward to returning to Zambia to work with them again.
“It was just awesome. It was so great. I can't even convey how fulfilling it was,” she said. “I was in charge of a workshop that said, 'I'm important,' just telling these kids that, you know, 'You matter. People care about you, and you're strong, and you can be anything you want to be, and don't give up.'”
Many children in the African villages served by Mothers Without Borders have been orphaned due to losing their parents to war or disease, Newby said, and the care, instruction and love they receive from the volunteers who come there has saved many of them, both emotionally and physically.
“I think a lot of us just get so bombarded by the images of war and destruction that we just feel like there's no hope. What's the point?” Newby said. “I wish people knew how fulfilling it is to just reach your hand out to somebody else, and it doesn't take a lot of effort. I don't know how to impress upon people how important it is.”
Newby said she plans to return to Africa with the Mothers Without Borders organization in 2009.
In addition to her service to children, Newby is also an animal lover and spends four days a week volunteering at Angels for Animals, an animal rescue organization in Veyo.
“When I was younger, I had people around me that loved animals,” she said. “My father was a hunter, but he hunted so that we could eat – it was not a sport thing. So I was taught early on the difference between hunting for sport and hunting because you need to eat and respect for animals and how to care for them.”
Newby spends many hours each week working with and caring for the animals at Angels for Animals. She also works with Kris Neal of The Feral Fix – an organization that traps, vaccinates and spays or neuters wild, or feral, cats – to control breeding of the animals to reduce the litters of kittens that are left starving and running wild.
Newby has two cats herself – Oscar, a rescued cat she adopted, and Moby, and said her impetus for working with animals occurred about two years ago when she discovered an abandoned kitten outside Newby Buick, where her husband, Russ Newby, works. She spent a couple of months trying to befriend the kitten, lying on a blanket outside the car dealership to try to lure it out of its hiding place in the bushes, and she and Neal were finally able to trap the animal and take it to Angels for Animals. She said that experience alerted her to the local problem of abandoned and wild animals that she was not previously aware of.
“That introduced me,” she said. “I knew that there were problems, but I had no idea the extent of homeless cats out there, and they just breed so quickly that it becomes a huge problem in just a matter of months.”
Rocky Newby is now very involved in animal rescue and advocacy and plans to continue that work. She said if her husband would allow it, she would be the neighborhood cat lady, bringing home many of the rescue cats to live at her house.
She also plans to continue serving generally in any way she can throughout her life.
“I can see the need, and I can't turn away from that,” she said. “My conscience and my heart won't let me turn away from the need that I see in my community and around the world. I try to reach out in the best way that I can.”
To contact the Feral Fix to have a feral cat spayed or neutered, contact Chris Neal at 619-4712. To contact Angels for Animals, call 574-2220. For more information about volunteering with or donating to Mothers Without Borders, visit www.motherswithoutborders.org or call 801-796-5535.

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