A passion for all living things
Everywhere inside Valerie Tolman’s home in Missouri City are signs that she has a big heart.
There are family photos, including two biological and two adopted children who are all now grown, her two rescue dogs, Ivy and Ellie, are close by and, in an upstairs bedroom, are four kittens she’s fostering.
Her love of animals and passion for helping strays find homes earned her the Missouri City Volunteer of the Year award in 2017.
Tolman, a former newspaper reporter and software-industry analyst, started the volunteer program at the Missouri City Animal Shelter in 2014 after she retired. The shelter had a high kill rate (70 percent for dogs, 98 percent for cats), and with Tolman’s efforts, the euthanasia rate for dogs dropped to 23 percent and 64 percent for cats. She later formed Friends of Missouri City Animal Shelter, a nonprofit to expand the group’s efforts to keep animals healthy, alive and adoptable. The organization spent more than $40,000 annually on veterinarian bills for the animals.
“I like living things, and it breaks my heart to think something is suffering — animals or humans,” Tolman said.
She even challenged city officials about the lack of funding for the shelter, and volunteers encouraged the public to complain in letters and emails to the City Council. Eventually, the council budgeted $250,000 for the shelter.
“I fought city hall and won,” she said. “The animals are in such better shape. I’m proud of that.”
Prior to her work with the shelter, Tolman fostered wild animals, like racoons, squirrels and small mammals, through the Texas Wildlife Rehabilitation Coalition for 15 years.
But she’s most proud of her efforts to send high students from low-income families to college.
She and husband Davis Tolman, a retired petroleum geologist, started a scholarship for first-generation college students in 2001. The first year, they sent three high school seniors to college using their own funds. The second year, they engaged their church to help, and the congregation joined their efforts to send four students to college that year.
Tolman said 51 students have received full tuition, including books, through the program, which pays for community college for the first two years, then two years at a four-year college or university.
Although the graduation rate for the scholarship recipients is 54 percent, Tolman said all of the students tend to fare better in life simply because they attended college. Most of the students are the first in their families to go to college.
“It has a ripple effect, and even though some may not finish, there is a feeling that anything is possible,” she said. “We now have nurses, teachers and engineers because of this program.”