The Park City Rotary Club on Tuesday celebrated those in the community who have made Park City a better place to live.
One was Cheryl Soshnik, who, for her wide-reaching volunteerism, won the club’s Jack C. Green Volunteer Citizen of the Year Award, named after Park City’s mayor from 1978-86.
The Rotary forms a committee each year to decide who will receive the awards. The club gave the honors during its weekly meeting at the Sheraton Park City on Sidewinder. Members of the Rotary took turns extolling what made Soshnik a shoo in.
A retired EMT, Soshnik is a full-time volunteer who sees no other way to live. She currently serves as the Park City Senior Center’s board of directors co-vice president and as treasurer for the Park City chapter of the Elks Lodge.
She’s also helped with KPCW fundraisers, volunteered as a docent and board member for the Park City Museum, done work for the Egyptian Theatre, Sundance Film Festival, Park City Film and many more community organizations, according to Rotarian and Park City Elks Lodge trustee Craig Cooper.
“If you’re like me and you’ve seen Cheryl around, you might wonder if she has a twin,” said Cooper. “I can’t tell you how many hours she devotes to so many different organizations, and you might just see her at three different events in a single day.”
Her work for the Elks Lodge itself is particularly demanding, Cooper said. Soshnik took on the role of treasurer when her predecessor passed away. She jumped in and quickly learned QuickBooks, helping keep the lodge in order as it grew from 50 members to over 300.
She also helps out at the many community events the Elks hosted, such as Veterans Day, awards for first responders, Christmas parties, flag ceremonies and more.
“I look up to Cheryl and … her unending energy and dedication to service before self,” Cooper said. “To Cheryl and our friends at the Rotary, I say, ‘Thank you.’”
Trason Dixon, executive director for the Park City Senior Center, said he loves working with Soshnik.
“She’s just an incredible person. I really do love her to death. She’s so funny. She’s so endearing. She’s so irreverent,” Dixon said. “But at the same time she’s always just so willing to step up and help wherever necessary.”
Soshnik said volunteering inspired her career path.
When she moved to Park City to ski, her roommates persuaded her to join an EMT class so it wouldn’t be canceled due to low participation. That led her to volunteer in town and eventually earn her nursing degree. She worked as a trauma nurse and taught medical trauma systems to hospitals and health departments across the country.
She also enjoyed learning that the volunteer award was named after the former mayor.
“I actually knew Jack Green. Picked him up in the ambulance a few times,” she laughed.
Soshnik separates her volunteer work into two different categories, she said: work and play. The former is her work with the Elks Lodge and the senior center.
“They’re both very important things,” she said. “We’re working on getting this new senior center. And I got involved with that when I was president like five years ago.”
Between that and being treasurer for the Elks, or “the keeper of the coin,” as she said, Soshnik puts in 40 hours a week. That role wasn’t easy to jump into, but she has a piece of advice for how to make it in this world that has never served her wrong: RTFM.
“Read the fucking manual,” she said.
Literally. That’s how she learned QuickBooks. It’s how she learned and even contributed to the development of Word Perfect. It’s how she has always felt comfortable saying yes.
“I’ve always been curious,” Soshnick said. “I’ve always wanted to learn, and I’ve always jumped into things that maybe I’m not super qualified for, but I’ve always spent my life doing what I call serendipitous things.”
And there’s really no excuse now with YouTube, she said. Her philosophy: figure it out. Read a book, read the manual, watch a video.
Then there’s the play: gigs like volunteering with the Egyptian Theatre and at Sundance Film Festival — that’s just fun, she said. She just saw Pure Prairie League come through to the Egyptian.
But work or play, the communities you find while volunteering, that’s what makes any of it worth it, she said.
“It’s meeting not just the clients but the other people you work with in the volunteer world,” she said. “Some of these people are still my best friends, and I would have never met them if I would not have been a volunteer. … It’s just wonderful to this very day.”
Rhonda Sideris won the Linda Singer-Berrett Professional Citizen of the Year Award, named for the club’s first female president. See the accompanying story at swiftcharge.net.