This Saturday morning, after the last of the walkers and runners are in and the trophies and raffle prizes given out, the 28th— annual Crown of Queen Anne Fun Run & Walk will be history.
And the curtain will come down on a significant part of Helpline, and Queen Anne, history, as well.
Pat Sobeck, 83, longtime executive director of the Queen Anne Helpline, retires July 31. This year’s Fun Run & Walk is dedicated to her, and she’ll be saluted at the post-race gathering at Queen Anne Lutheran Church.
But her day won’t be over.
Sobeck will set up the Helpline table at the Queen Anne Community Center playfield. Having risen at dawn after a busy week of preparation, Saturday will be a long day for her. Those close to Sobeck call her tireless, though she does allow, “I’ve slowed down a bit. I say no once in a while.”
The day after the Fun Run Sobeck, her husband Don, family members and friends will embark on a cruise to Alaska before she returns to complete her final days at the Helpline. “Don has been Pat’s strongest, steadiest Helpline supporter,” noted Sobeck’s younger sister and Helpline volunteer Donna Hegstrom.
These are the days people involved with the Queen Anne Helpline over the years knew would come. In a late 1990s interview with the News, Sobeck mused on the possibility of retirement in the not-too-distant future.
The “tireless” description has been earned.
For three decades, backed by a board of directors, Sobeck has been the Queen Anne Helpline. Her ability to galvanize the Queen Anne business community on the Helpline’s behalf has allowed the organization to grow from its first year’s operating budget of $12,000 in 1982 to a current budget of $300,00.
The Helpline’s mission statement reflects Sobeck’s character, as described by others — direct and compassionate: “to promote personal dignity, self-respect, hope and an independent quality of life to our neighbors by providing supportive social services to those who need assistance.”
Like anyone else, Sobeck, a child of the Great Depression, likes to have fun. But to an unusual degree, her life and work have been one.
South Dakota beginnings
Born on St. Patrick’s Day, 1929, Sobeck grew up in Solan, N.D., a town of a couple of hundred souls 50 miles outside of Bismarck. Her maiden name was King; her background Norwegian; the family church Congregational.
“People in the community took care of each other,” she recalled of those years. “I remember 50 or 60 people would show up on a farm to help with the sheep-shearing. There were picnics and barn dances.”
Her mother taught school; her father did everything from driving a school bus to serving as sheriff. Tough times drove the family west. Her father had already gone ahead to work in the shipyards here when the 11-year-old rode the train to Seattle to join him. Her mother made sure there was a responsible woman on board to keep an eye on her daughter. As Hegstrom said of her sibling, “she has no fear.”
During the war years, Sobeck’s mother worked at Pier 91. Sobeck graduated from Coe Elementary School and came of age in another era.
“You played on the streets,” she said. “And if you wanted to do anything special, like go to the movies, you earned it.”
The family’s Christian values were woven into how they lived, especially when others in need were nearby. “Mom never knew if she was cooking for five or 15, “she recalled.
Sobeck would graduate from high school on Queen Anne and marry Don, who became an engineer. The couple has three children. And she would cook and sew, serve as PTA president, sing in Gilbert & Sullivan productions, help Vietnamese refugees, work as an office manager, take an active role in Queen Anne Lutheran Church and serve as treasurer of her Magnolia condo association, a role she still fills.
In 1981, Sobeck’s church asked her to attend a planning meeting for the Queen Anne Helpline. Some 18 months later, Dick Rhodes of Queen Anne Thriftway (now Metropolitan Market) and a prime mover of the Helpline, would ask her to take over. The pay was $300 per month.
As the late Ray Moore, state senator and another early Helpline backer, wrote: “After a few false starts, Pat Sobeck appeared and, without fanfare, quietly but with a steady dedication, put the organization on a firm footing.”
The “real deal”
On May 19 of this year, some 100 invited guests attended a surprise party for Sobeck at Queen Anne Lutheran Church. It was an emotional, heartfelt and humorous evening, which included tributes from the floor and tributes circulated in print.
Among those in print, former Helpline Board president Michael Garner remembered finding things not quite ship-shape just before a big fund-raising gala at the downtown Sheraton and how Sobeck enlisted board members and their spouses to put things right.
“Those tasks she did not assign, she did,” Garner wrote. “I remember watching her, dressed up like Cinderella for the ball, hustling about like a stevedore. She would do the heavy lifting, if necessary, but things were going to come together.”
And, Garner noted, they did.
In another written tribute, past Helpline board president Craig Wilson, one of the masters of ceremonies for that night, offered: “Pat was the ‘real deal’ when it came to kindness, passion for life, service to others and a true, down-to-earth individual that exuded love and wisdom. Sounds a bit flowery, perhaps, but true.”
Sister Donna Hegstrom recalled in a May interview: “I think what people need to recognize about Pat is that she had no formal training in social service work or budgeting. It was her can-do attitude.”
Looking back, Sobeck said the thing that makes her most proud is the continuing community support for the Helpline. “It’s wonderful when you send out a [Fun Run] letter for crossing guards and you get confirmations back.”
As her friends and associates tell it, when Pat Sobeck sends out a call for volunteers, she always hears back.
A Helpline search committee is in the process of finding a successor.
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