For a typical stressed senior, dealing with angry patients or the elderly in a crowded hospital is the last thing they’d want to fill their free time with, but for Vivian Trinh, it’s one of her favorites. 

Vivian grew up in San Jose, with an older brother. She has always lived here, and all the places around here have become her community. 

Vivian started her volunteer work, as a kind of an accident. She started in a summer program and was offered to transfer to volunteering year-round. 

While Kaiser Permanente does count the number of volunteer hours that can count for school, she now does it for fun. She did plan to go into a career relating to health, however, after taking classes she now plans on going into computer science. Even though Vivian does not plan on continuing in the healthcare field for her future career, she still continues to volunteer and enjoys it thoroughly. 

Vivian recalls the biggest struggle in her entire experience of volunteering. A very difficult woman came in and wouldn’t listen to anybody and started yelling. After some difficulty, security ultimately had to be called. However, Vivian did add that sometimes people are having a bad day and you just have to remember to be understanding and to not aggravate them. 

In her free time, Vivian likes to do big jigsaw puzzles, read, paint, and watch shows and movies. She mentions K- dramas, and on rare occasions Chinese or Thai dramas as well as anime.

When asked about her inspirations Vivian gave a very heartwarming description of her grandpa. He picked her up from school and babysat her every day when she was younger. He was always her inspiration, she described him as “a jolly man, as well as clever and creative”. Vivian recalls her grandfather often being in his workshop, “always tinkering away at lamps, electrical wires, and other devices.” 

Vivian loves volunteering because she finds it so fulfilling to help others, and making people’s days least slightly better. She mentioned how even a simple greeting helps someone dealing with health issues or having a bad day. Volunteering at different places gets her to meet new people, as well as working with people all on the different age spectrum. She enjoys helping people, as well as building new relationships with the people she volunteers with.