Special Olympics service outlasted the job titles.
Years of coaching, administration, fundraising and event work came before elected office and continued to shape how community institutions were understood afterward.
Community
Institutions survive because somebody keeps carrying them.
Community institutions survive on a mixture of frontline skill and back-office continuity. The record here includes health care, disability sports, shelter, youth activities, culture, running and the administrative work that keeps volunteers from having to reinvent the organization every season.
Safe Space Chico: the work and family both continue.
Karden on the floor of the Golden Valley Bank lobby while a key volunteer and I prepared Safe Space treasury money for deposit. The nonprofit work was real work; family life kept moving beside it.
Shalom Free Clinic
Randall serves as President and Krista as Board Secretary. When Randall joined the Board, the clinic was nearly out of cash and its thrift store was bleeding it dry. Closing the store stopped the loss; the rebuilt organization now supports payroll, insurance, administration, and renewed outreach.
Read the fiscal-turnaround record →Special Olympics
Nearly two decades of coaching, leadership, event operations and advocacy around inclusive sport.
Special Olympics story →Rosas de María
Culture, bilingual family life, youth performance and nonprofit governance meet in a program built to carry folklórico forward.
Visit Rosas de María →Chico Running Club
After COVID, the Board moved toward ending races and folding the club. Randall and Krista did the work that prevented dissolution. They later transitioned off the Board with the nearly fifty-year institution active and growing.
Read the continuity record →Safe Space & housing
Direct shelter work, board and treasurer service, housing advocacy and the professional housing background behind it.
Youth and schools
Swimming, drama, dance, scouts, sports, Virtues and the family logistics that turn community organizations into lived institutions.
Crisis intervention & Catalyst
Krista’s first post-college professional chapter included approximately 8½ years of case management at Catalyst Domestic Violence Services. Randall volunteered during those years and completed the crisis-intervention training that became part of his own community-service work.
Krista’s vita →Civic life came home with us
Parenting did not wait outside the meeting room.
Transit rides, marches, service routes, community events and the Council chamber were also family spaces. That is one of the places where civic policy, public systems and ordinary planning became inseparable.
Youth organizations
Children are an efficient introduction to half the institutions in town.
Sports, swimming, schools, scouts, drama and folklórico all come with coaches, boards, fundraising, facilities and schedules. Family life and community service overlap because the same adults end up coaching, serving on boards, raising money and getting children where they need to be.
Institutions become family vocabulary
Children notice the systems adults call infrastructure.
Waste collection, buses, streets, schools, parks and emergency services were not only board or Council subjects. They were visible parts of ordinary family life. The costume is funny; the underlying point is not: public systems become understandable when people encounter the workers, equipment and routines that make them function.
Organizations in the record
Community work is connected to real organizations.
These links lead to the organizations and programs that appear throughout the family, community and public-service record.
Shalom Free Medical Clinic
Free medical care and safety-net service.
Official / source link →Safe Space Chico
Winter shelter and homeless-services work.
Official / source link →Catalyst Domestic Violence Services
Krista Stone’s foundational domestic-violence case-management work and Randall’s volunteer connection.
Official / source link →Chico AquaJets
Competitive swimming and family volunteer leadership.
Official / source link →Scouts 1555
Rhys’s Scouting program in Chico.
Official / source link →CJHS Drama
Chico Junior High drama and enrichment.
Official / source link →Boys & Girls Clubs of the North Valley
Chico youth programs, including the family’s “Crew” connection.
Official / source link →Chico Striders
Rhys’s current youth running team.
Official / source link →Chico Junior Cross Country
Rhys runs with Chico Junior XC; Randall’s possible 2026 coaching role remains pending.
Official / source link →Chico Meals on Wheels
Meal delivery and senior-support work.
Official / source link →Project Hope of Butte County
Breast-cancer assistance nonprofit; IRS filings identify Tracie Hannick, Krista Stone and Randall Stone in officer roles.
Official / source link →Blood donation
More than ten gallons of whole blood.
At least 82 whole-blood donations are currently accounted for across the historical record: 78 donations in the BloodSource/Vitalant donor history, plus at least four earlier donations — one in high school, one while attending Foothill College, and two at Oregon State University. That is more than ten gallons of donated whole blood.
The detailed donation-date ledger is retained as source material rather than published as a public medical-style history. Vitalant appears to have reconciled at least one Sacramento Valley Blood Foundation donation into its inherited donor record, so that donation is not counted a second time here.
= 10+ gallons donated
Mental health & suicide prevention
Out of the Darkness · Chico
Randall recalls being selected to serve as emcee for a Chico Out of the Darkness suicide-prevention event circa 2013. His participation was not connected to a suicide attempt of his own. As emcee, he chose to speak personally about growing up in a frightening and destabilizing home, the emotional and physical abuse he experienced there, and the lasting effects that kind of childhood can carry into adult life.
The point of the story is not that adversity was harmless. Randall describes himself as resilient and highly functional under pressure, but also openly acknowledges that the experience took a lasting toll. The scars remained even as the same early environment may have contributed to an unusually strong drive toward endurance sport, independence, and persistence.
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention · Out of the Darkness →
Arts and community
Not every community institution needs a board packet.
