ABOUT THE WINNER* Age: 40* Education: Geology degree from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga* Years volunteering: Three* Personal: Hale has spent his whole life in Chattanooga. He graduated from Brainerd High School.QUOTE ABOUT HALE”He’s a very nice person. His biggest problem is he doesn’t know how to say no. But don’t quote me on that, because I don’t want him to ever say no.” Leah Keith-Houle, Red Bank science teacher whose class Hale volunteers withFUN FACTOver the past two decades, Hale has worked on a variety of mapping projects. One of his proudest accomplishments was helping identify and clean up pollution sources in the Conasauga River Watershed.
Randy Hale and a class of Red Bank High Schoolers helped save lives this semester.
Hale has volunteered a couple weeks a semester for three years in an advanced science class. This year, he led the students on a project to map Padang, Indonesia, a city particularly prone to natural disasters.
“There’s going to be a tsunami there. It’s not if, it’s when,” he said.
So his group of about 20 juniors and seniors spent three weeks mapping out 3,000 to 4,000 roads and buildings, invaluable information for first-responders when devastation strikes.