Operation Red Nose ready to help high holiday merrymakers
The holiday safe-drive service is gearing up for another year of ferrying merrymakers — including perhaps more people partaking in cannabis.
Operation Red Nose Greater Saint John volunteers have safely driven hundreds of people and their vehicles home over the past three years.
They don't charge a fare but they collect donations that go to PRO Kids, an organization helping low-income children participate in sports and extracurricular activities. The big kickoff for 2018 is Thursday night at McGill's on the Market Square boardwalk.
Paul Boudreau and Jen Butler are co-chairs of the operation, which drives people who are enjoying the holidays and may get too inebriated to drive.
But Butler said the service is no stranger to people calling in after smoking cannabis.
"We don't discriminate," she told Information Morning Saint John. "We take anybody. Even if you're tired … It's to get people home safely for whatever reason that may be."
How it works
Volunteers are assembled in groups of three. The driver and the navigator drive the car and the patron home, and a third person drives right behind the other two in order to take them back to base.
Boudreau said one of the challenges this year is finding volunteers because people still don't quite understand how the service works. For example, he said, you're never alone with someone in their car.
"The majority of people that we're trying to get home are not plastered to the point that they're vomiting," he said. "They're adults, they've got kids, they just want to make sure that they have their vehicles with them the next day."
Butler said they're not a taxi service, so anyone who calls in must have their own car with them to be driven home.
Volunteer numbers
Ideally, Butler said, the operation would have a few hundred volunteers this year.
The service goes on for eight nights, starting the weekend of Nov. 30 and ending on New Year's weekend. It usually gets 40 or more calls for drives a night.
The reason Operation Red Nose needs so many volunteers is partly because the Saint John area is so spread out, Butler said. The service boundaries are Hampton, Musquash, Grand Bay and the Saint John Airport.
"It really takes more volunteers than a smaller community," she said.
Each night ,Butler said, the goal is to have 10 teams of three, so no one has to be turned down.
Operation Red Nose is a donation-based service, so technically it's free.
"But what we suggest is what would it cost if you were to take a taxi," Butler said. "The more you donate, the more we donate, and the more money that we get to give to PRO Kids at the end."
In the last three years, the operation raised $16,000 for the charity, Boudreau said.
