ONE ON ONE | Cheryl Oblinger She's come full circle with the Red Cross

Is it true that the Red Cross was your first job?
First and only, yes. I did a couple of things in high school, but it was more volunteer that anything, but my one and only job was the Red Cross.
What was your first position?
Executive secretary. In my family you grew up, you got to your senior year in high school, and you were expected to go out, get a job and become self supporting. It was getting close to graduation and I knew I needed to find a job. The Mahoning chapter was looking for a secretary. They had contacted several of the high schools where they had an intensive office education program and a number of us went for interviews. I got selected, and I started the day after graduation.
So it seems almost by chance that you wound up at the Red Cross.
It really was. I had never really thought anything at all about the Red Cross. So, when I started there, the whole idea about the Red Cross and what it did was a total surprise to me. I had no clue just how much the chapters did and the kind of services they provided or anything else.
What did you like about it?
I think the thing that really intrigued me the most was the fact that the Red Cross gave you the means, to be able to help people. A lot of times people think, "I wish I could have done this," or "I wish I could have done that," and with the Red Cross, I was in a position where I could do something.
So I guess you were only a secretary for a little while?
I was only a secretary for about three months. Not only was I executive secretary to the manager, but part of my job was to do some of the more simple casework. For example, if you had someone in the service that maybe their mom and dad hadn't heard from in a while, they wanted to find out how they were, I could handle those kinds of messages. I just absolutely fell in love with the work I was doing.
After three months, one of the caseworkers was leaving, and I asked them to take a chance on me, and they were good enough to give me that chance.
About 10 years later you decided to go into management and moved to Massachusetts for a position in Worcester.
I loved what I was doing in Youngstown, I really did. But the chapter had a very stable staff. Most of the people were married, they had families, they weren't looking to move on, so there weren't going to be a lot of opportunities for me to do something else there. I knew that if I wanted to move up the chain or do something different, I'd have to leave the area. That was hard, to leave family, but within Red Cross I was lucky to get the job in Worcester.
A while later, you grabbed the opportunity to come back to the Valley.
I had some reasons to come back. My mother, my sister both had some illnesses, and I wanted to be closer to home.
I was working as a manager at a chapter in Butler, Pa., and something really bizarre happened. I found a Sunday edition of the Youngstown Vindicator, on a newsstand over in Pennsylvania on a Tuesday night. It was the last copy left on the shelf, and I hadn't seen a Vindicator in a long time. I thought, "I'm just going to pick it up, take it home, and I'm going to read it from cover to cover."
I did, and I saw the ad for this job in the newspaper, and it was like, what are the odds of that happening? So I thought "What the heck, I'm going to give it a shot." This chapter had always had a good reputation, it was close to home, and I thought it would be a real challenge.
Has your job changed much in the last year, since Sept. 11? The Red Cross has come under a lot of criticism.
I would say that it has. On Sept. 11, these people here just jumped in and did everything they needed to do, from dealing with the hundreds of phone calls that came in about blood drives, from calls from people wanting to do a fundraiser, to wanting to give us money, to people who wanted to volunteer.
Within just a few weeks, all of that had shifted. There were a lot of people very unhappy with the some of the decisions made at the national level with what to do with the money. Luckily, they reversed that decision and now all that money is being used for exactly what people intended it to be used for.
What is your favorite movie?
Probably "The American President." The reason is, I guess with all the stuff that goes on in politics, you just have to wonder how honorable people are, and in the end of the movie, he does what is probably the right thing. I just love his speech at the end.