Volunteers are ready to represent Houston
said she loved every day she did interviews. She moved to Houston just last year and said she got to meet people from every corner of the city. Over videoconference calls, she said she interviewed people traveling in Mexico, Australia and Nigeria.
The volunteers come from every walk of life. Most were working adults, the interviewers said — CEOs, teachers, doctors and firefighters — along with students and retirees.
They were looking for people to positively represent the diverse, entrepreneurial city. They were looking for team players, and people who know how to make work fun. And, the interviewers said, they found so many of them.
“You could tell me that I’m the captain and I’m picking up trash, and I’d probably have a great time,” Blasa Ortiz said of the attitude of volunteers selected. Ortiz, who recently left the Army after serving 16 years, said she made the 11-hour trip from her fiancé’s military base in Missouri every week to interview applicants.
The interviews aren’t quite over, host committee officials said. Houstonians can still join the waitlist at www.housuperbowl.com/ volunteer.
Most of the 30,000 volunteer shifts leading up to the Feb. 5 game will be spent welcoming and directing visitors at airports, hotels and public events like Super Bowl Live, the 10-day downtown fan festival leading up to the big game.
The Super Bowl host committee CEO, Sallie Sargent, said the city couldn’t pull off the megaevent without the volunteers, whom she called “the ambassadors of Houston.” And, she added, Houstonians have signed up in larger numbers and earlier than previous host cities.
Steven Lopez, a Sugar Land native who came Saturday wearing his two Olympic gold medals in taekwondo, told the volunteers the effect they can have on visitors. He said Rio residents helped welcome athletes and spectators at this summer’s Games.
A single interaction with a local can shape a visitor’s impression of a city for better or worse, Lopez said.
The host committee’s director of volunteers, Andy Newman, said people volunteered because they want to feel like team members rather than simply spectators.
Newman, a British native who confessed to cheering for the Dallas Cowboys as a child, organized 70,000 volunteers during the London Olympics in 2012, which he said was the largest mobilization of Britons since World War II.
The thousands of spirited volunteers in the arena Saturday roared loudest when Newman joked about the New England Patriots’ recent scandal.
“We’re here to pump you up, unlike one of Tom Brady’s footballs,” he said.