An information technology leader who advocates for foster youth and a neonatal intensive care unit assistant who volunteers for Native American tribes in Mariposa County each received the 2024 David Lawrence Community Service Award.
Principal IT Business Operations Consultant Krystal Edwards, a 17-year employee, and Oakland Medical Center Senior Unit Assistant Deborah Tucker, a 27-year employee, are among 13 employees nationwide recognized for their volunteer efforts. Launched in 2003, the award is named for David Lawerence, MD, former Kaiser Permanente CEO. Each recipient receives $10,000 from Kaiser Permanente to give to a charity.
Caring for foster youth
Edwards is president of the executive board of directors of Koinonia Family Services of Loomis, California, the same organization she received services from as a foster youth.
The organization serves over 2,000 youth in California, providing foster care services, adoption, short-term residential treatment programs, and a variety of youth social services. She previously volunteered with Koinonia for 26 years, mentoring youth, coordinating trips and activities for foster youth, fundraising, and speaking at events, before becoming its president.
“I am grateful for the foster families I lived with because they gave me insight into what healthy families should look like as opposed to what I grew up with,” said Edwards, who survived sexual abuse by her father and grandfather. “Koinonia believed in me so I could believe in myself. There was a social worker in a group home where I lived when I was 13, and that was when I first really felt loved and understood in my life.”
Her 200 hours a year of volunteer service at Koinonia include advocating for state legislative bills that support foster care services, providing governance, leadership, and oversight to the organization. Her $10,000 award will go to Koinonia.
Advocating for Native Americans
Tucker, a member of the American Indian Council of Mariposa County, has volunteered and advocated for cultural preservation of Native Americans in Yosemite National Park for over 20 years. Currently she is helping create a spiritual and educational site called Wahhoga that features progress and partnership from the past and documents mistreatment, exploitation, and violence against Native Americans in Yosemite Valley dating back to the 1850s.
She also is board secretary for Native Solutions Family Guidance Center in Mariposa County, which operates 4 sober-living homes that offer DUI classes and supervised visitation.
Each Mother’s Day weekend for the past 30 years, Tucker has volunteered with the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation to help organize a powwow with song and dance to raise money for a scholarship named after her mother, Nellie Tucker.
She said she will give her $10,000 award to Native Solutions to fund the scholarship and the sober-living homes.
“It’s kind of in my nature to be out and about and try to be involved,” said Tucker. “I just grew up like that. I saw my parents get up and go out and volunteer. I have 3 older brothers, and we were always involved in the community. It’s part of our life.”
