Meet Petaluma Butter and Egg Days Parade Grand Marshal Elece Hempel

When the Petaluma Downtown Association mulled its selection of the grand marshal for the 2020 Butter and Egg Days Parade, there wasn’t much argument when Elece Hempel’s name came up.

Hempel sits at the head of an organization with its fingerprints on nearly every aspirational community service initiative in Petaluma – from senior services to food security, homelessness aide and employment training.

In the past two years, the nonprofit Petaluma People Services Center, where Hempel works as executive director, has somehow taken on an even larger role, helping curb the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic that put unprecedented strain on the local community.

“I think other communities that don’t have this embedded human services partner have suffered during COVID in a way that Petaluma residents haven’t,” Hempel said, pointing to a network of 400 engaged volunteers who help the nonprofit deliver services. “We didn’t miss a day delivering hot meals to seniors… The number we’re serving now is astronomical.”

Whether it was partnering on rental assistance programs, distributing federal coronavirus relief funding, establishing an emergency response team for mental health or launching a hotline meant to keep seniors company, the nonprofit that serves more than 10,000 people each year on a $5 million budget kept going.

The past two years have only strengthened the Petaluma Downtown Association’s desire to recognize Hempel and her organization, which lost out on the recognition with health orders preventing large gatherings. For City Manager Peggy Flynn, who works closely with both groups, the belated honor is well deserved.

“Elece exemplifies what it means to be a Petaluman. She is integrated into every essential fiber of our community, and her leadership, inclusivity and emotional intelligence features prominently in everything she does,” Flynn said. “It is befitting to have Elece as grand marshal in our first Butter and Egg Days Parade following these very difficult two years, where she and (Petaluma People Services Center) have been so instrumental in ensuring the well-being and resiliency of our community.”

During a phone interview in mid-March, between a ribbon cutting for an anti-racist library and other sundry to-do list items, Hempel was quick to emphasize the importance of volunteers, as well as the staff members she works with at Petaluma People Services Center. Once that’s out of the way, she’s happy to tout the team’s work.

“We took on challenges. We kept working,” Hempel said.

Perhaps her favorite example of that is the organization’s “You’re Not Alone” program, which promised a phone call for lonely seniors during the early days of pandemic-induced lockdowns. Like many of the social services the organization provides, those phone calls — all 3,000 of them daily throughout Sonoma County — continue to this day.

Petaluma People Services Center went from delivering 2,000 meals per month to 10,000 during the height of the pandemic. And for the most important trips, Petaluma People Services Center still showed up to provide rides, even if most of the volunteer drivers were older adults themselves.

“During the pandemic, we really had to pivot and think about how we were going to provide these services safely,” Hempel said in a 2021 interview. “We had to change a lot of things on the fly.”

In talking with Hempel, the sense of urgency — about any given effort — is palpable. As she ensures ongoing, daily contact with the organization’s thousands of clients — “we’ll never lose that,” she says — Hempel also sees a future of organizational growth, including efforts to bridge the gap for seniors when it comes to housing costs, among other age-friendly work the nonprofit plans to take on.

Being a passenger, as she is in this year’s Butter and Egg Days Parade, isn’t necessarily natural for Hempel, who has also spent the past decade serving as a volunteer judge for the parade while driving social change for the community.

But she agreed to the honor on one small condition.

“When Marie told me, I said wait, do I get my spot back as judge next year?” Hempel said.

There won’t be much argument.

Tyler Silvy is editor of the Petaluma Argus-Courier. Reach him at tyler.silvy@arguscourier.com, 707-776-8458, or @tylersilvy on Twitter.