Years with Self Help: 8

Meet Patrice Goodkind. Yes, that is her real name!

A Self Help volunteer since 2017, being of service seems to be her life calling. Before joining our team, Patrice worked on the Los Alamos Public School’s clinical counseling team, was a volunteer mediator and ESL (English as a Second Language) instructor, served on the Keep Albuquerque Beautiful Committee, and was on the Board of the Los Alamos Concert Association.

“It’s always been a value of mine forever and ever to give back to the community where I live,” she says. “I love being able to be of help.”

After working for 14 years as a contracts manager with a utility cooperative, Patrice returned to school to fulfill her dream of becoming a social worker. She earned her Master’s in Social Work degree from Howard University while living with her husband in Washington, D.C. They soon returned to New Mexico and landed in Los Alamos where Patrice maintained a private practice as a clinical therapist for many years.

When she retired her practice, a friend referred Patrice to Self Help. Then Executive Director Ellen Morris Bond found Patrice’s therapy background useful to the intake volunteer position, a role that requires speaking to callers in vulnerable situations, asking personal questions, and assessing resource needs.

Although no stranger to helping others in need, she says the experience of talking to “people who live in different places in northern New Mexico” opened her eyes. “I didn’t have as much appreciation as I do now of how difficult it can be for people in rural New Mexico,” she says. “Especially if you are disabled, especially if you don’t have transportation, especially if there’s nowhere nearby to get a job except a dollar store and everyone else in your county is trying to get a job there. And you’re taking care of a family member who is physically or mentally compromised. It can just be so hard.”

Now based in Albuquerque, Patrice is able to continue on as a Self Help intake volunteer due to the remote nature of the work, which is something she’s glad about. When not helping out her community, she enjoys exercising at the gym, staying in touch with friends, and exploring the New Mexico landscape, especially the Jemez and the hoodoos and other dramatic rock formations of the badlands.

Thank you Patrice for your dedicated commitment to Self Help over the years!