Volunteers

Peace Corps volunteer Alexandra Hodgkins couldn't be farther from her comfort zone here in Panama's Darien jungle: coral snakes, sauna-like heat and, just a few miles east up the Pan-American Highway, marauding Colombian rebels. But the 25-year-old New Hampshire native wants a career in international development, and she figures a couple of years helping this poor community find permits and financing for a medicinal soap business will be invaluable experience.

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.

On his medical missions to Africa, Dr. Lawrence Czer has dealt with poverty, lack of electricity, bad accommodations -- and military checkpoints. In Sierra Leone, Czer and his team were sometimes stopped by rifle-toting soldiers who simply wouldn't let them through. "They'll just have you stand there and you'll see other people going through," Czer said. The medical team refused to give the soldiers any money. All they could do was try to cajole them. "Or shame them," the doctor said.

A trove of trash was plucked from the Los Angeles River on Saturday morning during the 20th annual river cleanup. An estimated 3,000 volunteers spread out over 14 sites from the San Fernando Valley down to Long Beach. Wearing disposable gloves and armed with trash sacks, the garbage-collectors-for-a-day did their part to purge the river of all manner of trash that ends up in its 52-mile stretch.

Wearing a T-shirt labeled "YouthBuild" and wielding a green-paint-covered roller, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis visited Los Angeles on Monday to kick off United We Serve, President Obama's summer service initiative to create change in U.S. communities through long-term volunteer involvement, creating jobs along the way. "Our hope is our future, and volunteerism is one way of giving back . . .

The food giveaway Saturday afternoon was something of a homecoming for two Los Angeles Clippers, as they returned to their old neighborhood in South Los Angeles to help needy families. Veteran point guard Baron Davis and forward Craig Smith joined forces with teammates, the Salvation Army and Feed the Children, a Christian nonprofit, to pass out food and other goods to about 800 families. Davis, joined by his 88-year-old grandmother, Lela, and sporting a bushy beard, said he felt nostalgic returning to his old turf, just a block away from the court where he had his first basketball practice.

Seated in the corner of a bustling classroom, school volunteer Hanan Masarwa is barely visible amid a scrum of first-graders. The 18-year-old Masarwa is teaching the children to add as part of an Israeli national service program created in August. The volunteer program is an attempt to provide avenues, other than mandatory military service from which they are exempt, for integrating Arabs and religious Jews more fully into the mainstream Jewish state.

Ann Owen, a seventh-grader from West Branch, Iowa, had a tough initiation when she volunteered for the first time to work a phone bank at her local Barack Obama campaign office. Iowans -- even the nicest ones -- suffer from political call burnout as the caucuses approach. "I got a lot of hang-ups at first," said Ann, who was inviting folks to see Michelle Obama, the candidate's wife. "The rejection didn't feel too good. My eyes started watering.

Every Wednesday at the Sydney M. Irmas Transitional Living Center in North Hollywood, Michael Guggenheim teaches a handful of students how to type their names and basic phrases in Microsoft Word and how to work with math, vocabulary and typing programs. At a recent tutoring session, Michael moved between the laptops used by shelter residents Alicia Lewis and Heaven Sanders, both 7. He coached them for 30 minutes on typing their names, then switched to a half hour of vocabulary and math games.

They knew they couldn't set this little country community right in a day -- the storms had been too brutal for that. But at least, they figured, they could clean it up. All along the two-lane road through town, men in hunting jackets moved around quickly in heavy machinery, plowing and piling debris. Farmers in ball caps amputated horizontal cedars, poplars and pines with buzzing chain saws. Church ladies in fresh makeup and work gloves tidied the yards in front of roofless homes.