One is a compassionate counselor and the other a technological wizard.
Both brought their drive to help others to the District Attorney’s Office as volunteers. And both recently were selected as the office’s volunteers of the year.
Mary Glenn, pictured left, serves as the office chaplain. An ordained pastor and educator, Glenn has volunteered with the office since 2016. She provides spiritual guidance, emotional support and encouragement to members of the office who are experiencing grief, trauma and other challenges.
She has assisted the office by offering invocations at major events, participating in the office’s peer support group meetings and providing training and resources on matters such as trauma care and stress management.
“I see people who have demanding roles and jobs, and I want to offer support and care for those who give sacrificially to the community,” Glenn said. “If I can alleviate the burden they feel a bit, that’s a gift to me.”
Volunteer Benjamin Deuson, a recent graduate from the University of La Verne, pictured below, joined the office in 2016 and has contributed more than 2,700 hours of his time. He initially assisted in the Systems Division, which handles the office’s information network. But Deuson’s high-tech acumen later was put to use by the prosecutors and investigators in the office’s Cyber Crime Division.
He assisted in creating a monitoring mechanism that can help identify cyberattacks against the office’s website. Deuson also helped prosecutors quickly sort through electronic records to identify a certain classification of documents.
Deuson, who has been working on programming and coding of computers since he was in middle school, said he appreciates the latitude the office has given him to explore different options to solving problems and the opportunity to get hands-on experience.
“It was rewarding to help employees get the information and the facts that they want and need,” Deuson said. “I hope that it helps more people down the line.”
Glenn and Deuson and other county volunteers were honored at a luncheon ceremony in April. They are among thousands of volunteers who contribute tens of millions of dollars in services to the county annually.
