Photo by Scott Manchester. Thanks to the Argus-Courier for allowing us to use this photo.
COTS stands for “Committee on the Shelterless,” and in our early days in the late 1980s we were truly a committee of volunteers—a group of people who were horrified to see the “big city problem” of homelessness come to Petaluma. They moved heaven and earth to provide food, shelter and the chance for a better future to those who were struggling to get back into homes of their own.
Mary Isaak and Laure Reichek were the two ringleaders.
“Mary was easy-going and conciliatory,” says Tim Kellgren, Elim Lutheran Church’s retired pastor and one of COTS’ first board members. “I think of her as the great mother of this organization. She cared so much, and she had utter confidence that the community would come together.”
Laure was “feisty,” Tim says. “She gave everyone that push that we needed. You just can’t say, ‘no’ to Laure.”
Together, Mary and Laure recruited hundreds of supporters, establishing food and shelter programs for those in need. There’s hardly a business, a congregation, a community group or a neighborhood block that didn’t pitch in—cooking, cleaning, hauling, teaching, babysitting, fund-raising, advocating.
Volunteers are still the heart of our operations, and, as homelessness increased, we’ve augmented their ranks with professional staff. We now serve people throughout the county. On any given night, COTS shelters up to 140 people and we provide support to nearly 400 people to help them maintain permanent housing.
Mary Isaak
The only title Mary ever wanted was “Go-fer and Chauffeur,” says Grayson James, whom Mary recruited to be COTS first Executive Director. “She wanted to be doing all the time. She had no appetite for sitting around a table and talking.” That was a good thing, Grayson says, because the amount of work required of her in COTS’ early days was staggering. “She put in 80-hour weeks. That was the norm,” Grayson says.
COTS wasn’t Mary’s first life-saving project. A few years ago, a middle-aged man came to a tour of our Mary Isaak Center. He told us Mary was the reason he was alive. She’d helped him navigate a rough patch in his life through the Live Oak High School, an alternative school she founded in Petaluma. “And I’m not the only one,” he told us. “There are a lot of us who loved Mary.”
Mary kept doing for COTS until just months before her death in 2007. She helped with our food programs and served on the board. When her health and her hearing deserted her, she stuffed envelopes from home.
Her children remain active with COTS and our flagship shelter in Petaluma is named for her.
Laure Reichek
After Nazis murdered her grandfather, a teenage Laure took his place in the French Resistance, transcribing radio messages from the Free French and delivering them by bicycle to Resistance fighters hidden in camps and safe houses throughout the countryside. After the war, she fell in love with American artist Jesse Reichek and they settled in Petaluma where she brought her signature courage to the fight against homelessness.
Laure is the one who first noticed people pulling food out of a grocery store dumpster, first noticed people camping by the river. She immediately knew to enlist Mary because, she said, “Mary wanted to do good and because we both liked to smoke and drink coffee.”
Dan Jaffe, the founder of Copperfield’s Bookstore, was an early and ardent volunteer. He said this in an interview with the Argus-Courier. “[Laure] has organized more people faster than any of the organizations I’ve been part of. She has the combined energy of ten people, yet I’ve never seen her lose sight of her caring and sincerity. She works 12 hours and will still get up in the middle of the night if someone needs her.”
Laure went on after her work with COTS to develop employment programs for homeless adults and to teach English to immigrants. We are thrilled that she continues to advocate for COTS and our work.
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