Raul Pinon Super Bowl Volunteer
Raul Pinon, who works in Draper’s export sales department, had a great experience volunteering at the Super Bowl held in Indianapolis, Indiana recently. Draper is proud of all the employees that volunteer for community service, lending a hand for everything from blood drives to Relay for Life fund raising. We were happy to see Raul go through the lengthy process to help out at this fun event as well. Here is what Raul had to say about the experience.
My NFL Experience
It started about two years ago when I became interested and completed my application to be a Super Bowl Volunteer. I wanted to be part of the whole experience and enjoy the festivities. The Super Bowl Committee began sending e-mails with updates and the status of how things were progressing. Last spring they invited me to complete a more thorough form to be a volunteer. They also did a background investigation. There were many different positions to choose from. I chose to work in a Warming Station.
My duties were to make sure that when other volunteers, police officers, fire and emergency personnel came in from their responsibilities, we would have hot refreshments and snacks available to them. In September the committee advised me that I had been chosen to be a Super Bowl volunteer. Training started in November and December. In January, I picked up my package and credentials, which was pretty neat–it included a shirt, coat, scarf and headband.
My schedule was to volunteer three nights including game day. On days that I did not volunteer, I enjoyed some of the activities on Georgia Street, which included going to a couple of concerts, the NFL Experience at the Convention Center, and a taping of ESPN. The nights that I volunteered I met a lot of people coming into the Warming Station. I had the opportunity to speak with them on how things were going out in the crowd. Many visitors were saying that this was one of the best Super Bowl pre-activities they had ever seen or visited. They thought it was well organized, and that security was visible everywhere. The last couple nights before the game, the crowd was so unbelievably large that you could hardly walk down Georgia Street. On game day everyone was so excited, you could hear people rooting for their teams out in the streets.
On Saturday February 18, the committee had an appreciation dinner for all the volunteers at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. They had lots of food, live music, free souvenirs. There were around 8,000 volunteers for Super Bowl XLVI. For me this was an experience that I won’t forget – how I got to be part of the 1st Super Bowl in Indiana.
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