Neighborhood resident Mildred Hopkins has been through dozens of disasters.

Hopkins is a public information officer for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the government agency that coordinates the clean-up and re-building in the wake of a disaster. She’s one of many reservists who wait for FEMA to call when help is needed. The job makes for a successful retirement, Hopkins says.

Sign up for our newsletter

* indicates required

“To me, if you sit and rock, you’re dying on the vine,” she says. “When your mind is focused on something, you’re not thinking about your problems.”

Calling upon her background as a journalist, Hopkins helps FEMA with news releases and press conferences and provides survivors with information they might need, such as how to make an insurance claim and how to disaster-proof a home in the future. She also informs survivors of the government services available to them.

“We let [victims] know what help is available and that they need to apply for that help,” Hopkins says.

Hopkins has been involved in FEMA operations for 16 years and has been called to work after such disasters as Hurricanes Hugo, Andrew and Iniki and the Northridge earthquake in California. She sets up her press shop in a field office near a disaster site.

Most of her coworkers are fellow retirees. They are paid when they work, which Hopkins says has been more often in recent years than in the past. There has been one disaster after another over the last couple years, Hopkins says. In 1993, she only spent nine weeks at home. The work can be intense, she says, sometimes lasting up to three to four months at a time.

“A reservist has to be able to pick up at a moment’s notice, have no qualms about traveling across the country from one day to the next,” Hopkins says. “For the first two weeks, they have to be prepared to work 14 to 16 hour days, seven days a week.”

Hopkins came to Dallas in 1969 with her husband Jim, an Air Force pilot who has since died. She joined FEMA after hearing about the organization from a friend.

“I like feeling I can do something for someone,” Hopkins says. “I tell people, I feel like I’m on the dessert course on the menu of life, and I’m loving it.”