Longtime Volunteer Honored for Work on Children’s Health in Pasadena

An organization dedicated to ensuring children and families have access to healthcare in the Pasadena area honored one of its own Friday for her tireless efforts over the past 16 years on behalf of local kids and families, representatives said.

Young & Healthy selected Allison Reed Dietrick as the recipient of this year’s Young & Healthy Alliance Award, the organization said in a written statement. The award was presented during the groups’ online Oktoberfest gala and fundraiser on Friday evening.

“Over the years, she has served on the Board, Development Committee and multiple Gala Committees,” the statement said. “In 2015, she founded the Young & Healthy Alliance, a multi-generational support network designed to provide awareness of and avenues for engagement with Young & Healthy’s mission to the community.”

But she wasn’t done yet.

“The Young & Healthy Alliance was the first local auxiliary to launch a Kids’ Alliance, which introduced Pasadena’s next generation of volunteers to the satisfaction of serving the community,” according to the statement. “Allison chaired the Alliance until 2019, when she turned her attention to co-chairing Young & Healthy’s wildly successful 30th Birthday Celebration last October.”

As the founder of the Young & Healthy Alliance, Dietrick said it was a little surreal receiving the award.

“It was actually kind of a surprise because I’m not usually in the position of receiving this award,  I’m usually in the position of presenting it,” she said. “It’s wonderful, of course, but again, it feels a little funny to be on the receiving end. Funny but good.”

Dietrick said she first became involved with Young & Healthy through another local healthcare charity, which has since closed. She then focused her attention on Young & Health, and its mission to make sure local children and families have access to the medical care they need.

“It became obvious that Young & Healthy needed an auxiliary of some sort to organize the many people here in town that care so much about Young & Healthy and would like to stay involved, keep up to date on what Young & Healthy is doing, to volunteer, to get involved, to donate, etcetera,” she said.

“Young & Healthy has this very deep network of supporters, but there was no formal organization or way for all of these people that care deeply about Young & Healthy to stay in the loop.”

The Alliance then expanded to include a group meant especially for young volunteers.

“There was nothing really for whole families to volunteer together and to experience service and commitment and giving back to the community as a family,” Dietrick recalled. “And so since I became the founder and the chair, and we founded a Kid’s Alliance, we’ve had some really committed kids who are now in mid-high school and late-middle school.”

Dietrick was born and raised in Pasadena.

“I went to Berkeley, I went to Harvard Law School,” she said. “I practiced law downtown for a decade before sort of retiring and becoming a stay-at-home parent and community volunteer.”

Dietrick’s husband, Todd, is an orthopedic surgeon who donates his skills to the organization’s clients, she said.

“Their children, daughter Reed, 13, and son Lars, 10, are active members of the Young & Healthy Kids’ Alliance and particularly enjoy assisting with Young & Healthy’s Mobile Dental Clinic each February,” the Young & Healthy statement said.

Young & Healthy also honored the Pasadena Child Health Foundation on Friday with its J. Donald Thomas Award.

More information on Young & Healthy is available on the organization’s website at yhpasadena.org.