Volunteer Story: Zack Young

What do you get when you cross a passion for healing with an aversion to blood? You get someone who isn’t suited for medicine, but still wants to help others. Faced with this reality, Zack Young was left questioning where his desire to improve people’s lives left him. “I wanted to help people, make them feel better,” recalled Zack when asked what drew him in his current direction. A kinesiology student at Simon Fraser University, Zack settled upon physiotherapy as his career path, like medicine, but without the “colorful” aspects. When asked whether his volunteering at Three Links was motivated by this decision, he assured me that while his volunteering satisfies an application requirement, his motivation for choosing Three Links can be traced far earlier. While his mother attended university classes, Zack was cared for by his grandfather, and listened to stories from the man who would serve as his role model. “He gave me both knowledge and life skills, and the stories were captivating, his life was full of adventure.” During our interview I was familiarized with his grandfather’s upbringing during the depression, travels to Europe as a pilot during the war, subsequent career in engineering, and passion for sailing (Zack wears a nautical pendant and gold necklace passed down by him). “You’d like to work with seniors” I asked? “It doesn’t matter who, I want to improve their lives. But if I can hear interesting stories simultaneously, why not?” was his response. Just one example of the reasons volunteers enter our organization, his passion is representative of all who devote their time putting others first, like the therapists whose ranks he strives to enter.