By Christianne Walker
© Seattle Gay Standard, June 2001

You might be a single mother who has just escaped life on welfare and gone back to school. Your car has broken down for the 10th and last time, leaving you with no way to shuttle your kids to and from the daycare center that frees you to attend classes. How in the world are you going to quickly find, let alone afford, safe and reliable transportation so that you can stay on your path to self-sufficiency? Enter the "People Helper," otherwise known as Brook Stanford-he has your keys to a new car, and a new chance at a better life.

This scenario is one of many true stories of Brook Stanford providing a lift up for those in need. For the last fourteen years, Brook has served as a virtual guardian angel to hundreds of individuals and families as the People Helper on Seattle's KOMO-4 Television. He produces on-air stories of common folks facing hard times who need help, and viewers respond overwhelmingly and generously. From securing a donated new motor home for a needy family to acquiring a specially fitted wheelchair for a disabled child, there has hardly been a good deed that Brook couldn't accomplish. And as an out gay man who has done so much to help so many, Brook is a strong representative of our gay community who embodies the principles of Pride we celebrate each year.

Brook's commitment to helping others comes from his faith in human generosity and the recognition that nearly everyone needs a little help at one time or another in their life. "So much of what you see in the news is doom and gloom-bad people doing bad things-and we lose sight of the fact that most of our people in this world are good people who have good hearts and respond to and empathize with the needs of other people. And that's really what the bread and butter of People Helper is. I go on the air and I cross my fingers and I ask for help, and most of the time people come through."

Viewers come through in big ways. Over the years, People Helper has raised over $8 million worth of goods and materials and evolved into its own nonprofit entity. It has also developed strong partnerships with other social service agencies, which enable it to help the hundreds of callers each week that Brook cannot help on the air. In addition to producing People Helper segments, Brook established ongoing programs to help community members throughout the year, such as KOMO-4's annual Food Drive, which delivers one million meals to needy families each holiday season. He also founded Computer Lifeline, a volunteer agency which recycles used computers and gives them to people in need who otherwise couldn't afford them.

What Brook does, in essence, is invoke a form of community action through television. "You know, how many things that you see on TV can you actually do anything about? The war in the Middle East-can you do anything about that? But this is something where you see the story and you can actually change the outcome of it, and that's powerful stuff. And I think that's one of the reasons we do so well with the stories we put on the air." He is skilled at telling the stories of how a certain turn of events can lead people into unfortunate circumstances, and he turns viewer empathy into activism. "The viewers pick up on that because they say, you know, 'There but for the grace of God go our family-this could be us,'" he says. "I look for stories right in here [his heart]. If I react to the story emotionally, then I'm thinking the viewers will, too, and I've been right most of the time."

Even the newsroom staff is not immune from showing emotion after seeing how deeply Brook's work affects peoples' lives. "My job description really sort of reads that I'm supposed to make [KOMO-4 anchor] Kathy Goertzen cry, and we accomplish that!" But for Brook, it's all about helping people. "I feel really blessed to be able to do it."

Originally from Michigan, Brook came to the Northwest and started working at KOMO-4 thirty years ago as a medical and health science reporter. Fifteen years into his job, Jim Boyer came to KOMO-4 as their new news director from New Orleans, where three stations were doing a People Helper program. Jim noticed how well Brook worked with other people and one day approached him about becoming the People Helper for KOMO-4, saying that he was the only person who could do it. Brook rose to the challenge and has taken the program miles beyond what the New Orleans programs did.

It's fair to say that Brook is almost universally loved and respected by colleagues and viewers. According to KOMO-4's Community Relations coordinator Pamela Bender, "Everybody loves Brook, he's a superstar. We get a lot of calls on our community phone line for the People Helper. He's touched so many lives that he's a tremendous asset to the station and our community at large."

He is comfortably out and proud in the workplace, but for the first eight years at KOMO-4, Brook was closeted and married. He remembers that early in his tenure, colleagues would occasionally make derogatory remarks about gays and lesbians and he would keep quiet. If gay issues were covered at all in the newscasts, they were used more as filler material and not as serious, newsworthy pieces. But that all changed, he notes, when former beauty queen Anita Bryant came to Spokane in the late 1970s in what was the first real national anti-gay rights campaign. KOMO-4 sent a film crew to cover her visit, and suddenly gay issues became important. Gay issues became news, educating viewers about who gays and lesbians were and the circumstances they faced in everyday life.

The workplace atmosphere began to change at the same time and now, Brook says, it's a very welcoming and respectful place for him and other gay and lesbian colleagues. Although he doesn't address his sexual orientation on the air during his People Helper segments, he makes no effort to conceal his identity and many in the larger community know he is gay. Sometimes, he says, people will call the People Helper line to say they loved the most recent Seattle Men's Chorus, with whom he has enjoyed singing for the last 18 years. He has developed a strong network of friends, family, and community in Seattle. He and his longtime partner, Freddie Johnson, have lived together in the Central District for fifteen years and he has two sons who both live in Seattle.

"People just adore me," he says cheerfully and honestly, but he's acutely aware that some people he has helped over the years might not be so appreciative if they realized he was gay. "They probably don't have a great spot in their heart for gay people. And I'm so tempted at times to say as I'm leaving, 'By the way.' but I don't do it. It doesn't seem appropriate. I just wish somehow they could open up their minds a little more and realize that we're not the way people paint us so much. We're out there doing things like this-not just me, but there's so much caring in our community and we don't get credit for it. The company gets credit and I get credit, but not as a gay man."

The issue of gay pride is very important to Brook, both in terms of fostering personal empowerment and achieving a society that accepts and respects differences. "I think it's really important to be out, and not to be out on a soapbox but to be out in your personal life with the people around you that are important to you." As an example, Brook tells of when he and Freddie first moved into their house in the Central District. The little kids across the street came out and called them faggots, so Brook and Freddie went across the street to their house, talked to their father on the front porch and explained what happened. "The father was OK," Brook remembers. "I think he was so startled that we were actually confronting him about this. It caught him off guard . but he knew it was the right thing to do. The main thing was that it didn't happen again, and little things like that make a difference. Just going to the [Gay Pride] parade or doing things that are safe-it's got to be more than that. You've got to try in your own way with what feels right with family and neighbors. First of all, try to set an example. Progress is made person by person. It's not speeches, it's not even legislation, I don't think. It's one person at a time. It's much harder for somebody to rail against someone they've come to know and admire, or even to know and not admire."

Brook's successes in his career and his relationships can be attributed to a combination of his supreme compassion, intelligence, self-assuredness, goodwill, and good humor. In the early days, People Helper had a phone message system where messages could be heard as they came in. Reporter Connie Thompson used to sit next to Brook and one day she was shocked to hear one particular message. He remembers, "This guy called up and said, 'Why don't they get rid of you, you old faggot? Why don't they take you off the air, you old queen?' Click! It's the only time I've ever had anything like that happen, and I turned to Connie and I said, 'You know, I don't mind them calling me a faggot or calling me a queen, but don't let them call me old!'"

Of course Brook isn't old, but he will be retiring in January 2003. He will be irreplaceable as Seattle's People Helper, but citizens in Washington will continue to benefit from the human services he helped put in place long after he leaves the air. Until he retires, you can find out how to help those in need or seek help by contacting People Helper at (206) 441-HELP or sending an e-mail to peoplehelper@komo4news.com.