Volunteers

Whether by necessity or choice, a quarter of Americans take at least one vacation by themselves each year. Some solo travelers are single. Some have partners who dislike travel or have different interests or can't get away. Some just crave freedom. But all face the same question: What's the best trip for the person traveling alone? "The key is to know yourself," said Beth Whitman, author of a guide for women traveling alone and founder of Wanderlustandlipstick.com , a website devoted to advice and tours for women on the go. "There are times when you just need to get away, to recuperate.

MOORE, Okla. - Under a sunny sky, residents of this Oklahoma City suburb began cleaning up debris from the monstrous tornado that inflicted death and destruction - bodies of animals, overturned cars, homes reduced to rubble - as more information emerged about the human victims. The twister killed 24 people, the state medical examiner said Wednesday, 10 of them children, including two infants. The dead ranged from a 4-month-old boy to a 70-year-old woman and included two 9-year-olds who were best friends.

Glendale officials will soon recruit volunteers to replace naturalists the city laid off last year for budget reasons. The volunteers will provide public education and help patrol more than 5,000 acres of city parklands to report damage or unsafe conditions. "This will not be your average volunteer program," because it will require training and strong skills, Community Services and Parks Director Jess Duran told the Glendale City Council. The program will be modeled on similar ones in the Santa Monica Mountains and Oakland's East Bay Regional Park.

The Ocean Conservancy has run the numbers, and over the course of a single day in September 2012, more than 500,000 volunteers from across the globe collected 10 million pounds of trash from beaches and waterways. The top three most common items collected were cigarettes and cigarette filters (2.1 million), food wrappers (1.1 million), and plastic beverage bottles (1 million). Yuck. But at least it won't end up in the oceans. Here in California, 35,000 people volunteered to help clean the beaches and waterways in our state and removed 304,529 pounds of garbage.

Residents and business managers looking for ways to make their city prettier now have their chance. The city's Beautification-Environmental Commission is launching a campaign to draw in volunteers and get them "Painting Buena Park Beautiful." Organizers hope the program, which initially is being funded through a $5,000 federal block grant, eventually will be fully funded and staffed by community volunteers. Based on similar programs in Anaheim and other cities, the group will help homeowners who are unable to paint their homes because of physical or financial problems.

SECRET SPOTS OF THE WEST We asked you to nominate your favorite vacation places in the West -- your travel touchstones, so to speak -- and you came back with a satchel full of suggestions. We sifted and sorted and chose six to explore for ourselves. Marvelous or mundane? You be the judge. -- "It's so peaceful there. It's just such a beautiful place to go," says Michele Johnson of Los Angeles, in nominating the Best Friends Animal Society's sanctuary in Utah. THE SETTING Angel Canyon, a postcard-perfect, rust-colored sandstone canyon outside of Kanab, Utah, is home to the Best Friends animal sanctuary, said to be the country's largest no-kill animal shelter.

My mother, reacting to the recent spate of alarmist headlines about "raging" violence and increased security measures affecting Peace Corps volunteers in Central America, has taken to calling me on a near-nightly basis. "Just needed to hear your voice," she says to explain the call. "I'm fine, Mom," I respond. Frankly, it's getting annoying. It's not that I don't appreciate the chance to speak with my mother. What bothers me is knowing that she is seriously worried.

When Ellie Vargas of Woodland Hills feels anxious about earthquakes, she comforts herself with this image: thousands of rescue workers in pea-colored helmets and vests freeing trapped victims, fashioning splints out of newspapers for the injured and shutting off gas mains. The battalions are no fantasy, but Vargas' fellow graduates of a city-sponsored program that has trained 10,000 volunteers to respond to the next big disaster.

Christin Ernst was in a fix. An errant screwdriver punctured her tire on a San Diego freeway, leaving her stranded. That's when Thomas Weller -- a.k.a. the San Diego Highwayman -- arrived in his monstrous white search-and-rescue vehicle, complete with emergency lights flashing. A surprised Ernst watched as Weller slapped on her spare, inflated it and handed her a card. It reads: "Assisting you has been my pleasure.

After a hot morning of work, David Kahn and his farmhands sat down to lunch at a long wooden table on the porch. Today's feast featured a salad of juicy heirloom tomatoes picked from vines just a few feet away, pasta and pesto made with homegrown cilantro, and a crusty loaf of wheat bread baked the day before in an outdoor clay oven. If there are any doubts about the viability of Edendale Farm ? which Kahn built, improbably, on a sloping half acre smack in the middle of a swanky Silver Lake neighborhood ?

The teenager showed up in a panic on Thursday, cradling a wounded puppy in arms spattered with blood. A stray dog had attacked his 2-month-old pit bull on a walk near their South Los Angeles home. The city animal shelter nearby was the only place he knew to go. He ran over to Amanda Casarez, pleading for help. She took one look at the puppy's bloody gash and pulled out her cellphone. Within hours the pup was in surgery, the vet bill guaranteed by strangers from a pool of volunteers working with Downtown Dog Rescue, which sponsors an intervention program at the shelter.

The Ritz-Carlton, San Francisco is offering its guests, locals and other San Francisco visitors an opportunity to help preserve some of Golden Gate National Park 's most treasured areas with its Give Back Getaways program. Volunteers can donate a few hours to help preserve the Gardens at Alcatraz or restore the nursery at the Presidio by clearing invasive weeds, pruning, planting, etc. Guests receive free transportation from the Ritz-Carlton to the appropriate park and can enjoy the park after their shift ends.  The program launched in March but attendance has been light.  If more volunteers appear in May, the hotel hopes to extend Give Back Getaways in the summer and fall.

JULIAN, Calif. - To the outside world, this mountain hamlet in northeast San Diego County is best known for apple pie, snow during the holiday season and bed-and-breakfasts that cater to romantic flatlanders. For many of its 1,500 residents, however, the essence of their community is represented not by the delights that await tourists but by the dedication and heroism of the volunteer fire department that has guarded their homes and businesses for four decades. In Southern California's never-ending fight against backcountry, wind-driven brush fires, Julian is on the front lines.

From the Bay Area to San Diego, tens of thousands of volunteers throughout California are expected to participate in the nation's largest community service initiative as Big Sunday Weekend , a three-day event, kicks off on Friday. Celebrating its 15th anniversary, Big Sunday's mission is to build community through hundreds of community service projects, including food and blood drives, delivery of meals to seniors and the planting of vegetable gardens on school campuses, organizers said.

WEST, Texas - Residents here know the code of sirens, the language of a small-town Texas fire department. As the big fire trucks lumber along, one blast means they're heading to a small blaze; two means a fire drill or meeting. Then things get serious: Three blasts signify major structural damage; four that a person is trapped inside a vehicle, and nine blasts warn of a tornado. This week, the volunteers in the 29-member department suited up and raced to the scene of danger once again.

As Urs Fischer stood inside the Geffen Contemporary last month preparing for his big MOCA survey, the museum's much-discussed financial troubles did not seem to be weighing on him. "I don't care about any of that; I care about art," said the beefy 39-year-old artist in jeans and a long-sleeve black T-shirt, with assorted tattoos snaking up his arms. And he noted that his show has not been shortchanged because of any budget crunch. "Putting on a sculpture show always takes a lot of effort, but we didn't have to compromise much.

IN one month, John O'Donohoe was sued, was poisoned by anthrax, suffered a back injury and took his last breaths. And one look inside his pocket calendar shows that these sorts of setbacks aren't unusual for the Burbank resident. That's because O'Donohoe is role-playing -- as a patient for medical students, a witness in mock trials and a victim in a disaster drill.

When John Cox first visited the internment camp where about 10,000 Japanese-Americans were forcibly relocated during World War II, he was shocked--not by what he saw, but by what he didn't see. "There was nothing," the 16-year-old Northridge Boy Scout said of his trip last year. "There was just these two guard shacks and a few walls still standing. There's really nothing but a memorial plaque to tell you what really happened here."

If the penal code had a section on landscaping crimes, the Los Angeles Police Department would need a full-time squad to go after everyone responsible for the ongoing fiasco on its own property. It's been 3 1/2 years since the new headquarters opened at 1st and Spring streets, and the city is still trying to get the landscaping right, with planter boxes empty, dead palm trees still standing, a scrubby dirt garden near the memorial to fallen police officers and piles of soil and sand blighting the landscape.

A volunteer hiker who heard the cries for help from missing hiker Nicolas Cendoya credited "an amazing amount of luck" for the rescue. Ted Sindzinski said he spent Wednesday hiking in the area and decided to join the volunteers searching for Cendoya and Kyndall Jack, 18. He joined up with a friend of the pair about 5 p.m. and decided to do a “simple, 10-minute hike, just to look around places that perhaps somebody didn't have time to go...