Featured Volunteer

Bonnie Pedder

Bonnie Pedder is a new volunteer with the shelter, having just taken her orientation this May.  Already, this rising senior at JMU has given the shelter 100 hours of dog walking and cat socializing. All of those hours were worked in around a month-long trip to Japan to visit her sister! 

Bonnie is an Early-Childhood Education major and a transfer student from Longwood University. Her original plans were to work in the hospitality industry as a wedding planner. After a rather harrowing first-hand experience with the wedding of a friend, she realized that this career choice just might not be the best fit.  Since Longwood didn’t offer the new major she chose, she decided to give JMU a try. Her stints as a camp counselor for REC PAC in Fairfax County, and for the Jeremiah Project, a Christian mission camp, helped her decide on her possible future career.  She’s picked up a lot of other skills along the way, having been a secretary in an architecture firm, worked at Old Navy, for Habitat for Humanity, and, finally as a transfer student orientation guide at JMU. That last job had an extra perk - she met her current boyfriend – also a transfer student from Culpepper. He’s a computer science geek who shares a lot of common interests with her.

When Bonnie visited her sister in Japan this summer, she found the culture very interesting and the country beautiful, including the black sand beaches – a bi-product of the volcano’s on the island.  Her brother-in-law is career army, and they are currently stationed in Japan. They have an adorable 1 year old who celebrated her birthday while Bonnie was visiting, and she got to witness the child’s delight at the Disney show they attended.  She also hiked Mount Fuji with some of the army personnel, and said she wasn’t sure she could make it. She did it, but due to the thinner air at the summit, she had to take oxygen at the end of the hike.

Bonnie found the Japanese to be very welcoming and curious about other cultures.  One of the things she found to be the most interesting was their practice of covering their faces with surgical masks whenever they’re sick, even with a cold! They are very health conscious, and don’t want to expose others to whatever they might happen to have.  She said they also wear long sleeves and cover their legs to protect themselves from the sun.  

When I asked Bonnie about her other hobbies, I discovered that she is from a musical family, and plays the guitar and Oboe. She played and was drum major in the marching band at West Springfield High School. She also enjoys photography and, of course, walking dogs at our shelter. Bonnie found us when she was minoring in non-profit studies. She was looking for some community service work to do and some friends told her about our volunteer program. We’re thrilled that she’ll be around for at least another year, maybe longer if we’re lucky.

Her plans for the future are a little uncertain, but she’s considering joining “Teach for America” – an organization that places teachers in under-served and/or urban schools working with troubled children. Her sister would love her to teach on military bases so she’d not only help the children, but also earn the benefits of working for the government. She’s also considering special education. Time will tell what she settles on, but no matter what it is, she’ll put her heart and soul into it for sure!