ERIC BRADY The Roanoke Times

Robyn Dobyns (right) hosts a senior party at the Botetourt Resource Center in Buchanan on Wednesday. Dobyns has run the center since 2000, doing such things as helping senior citizens apply for Medicare and arranging driving lessons for the newly employed.

BUCHANAN -- For nearly a decade, Robyn Dobyns has been called on to do chores as diverse as burying a dead cat, scrounging up wheelchair parts and finding a way to get six cases of bananas to the local food pantry.

She has also had to comfort the dying.

Given to wearing jeans, sneakers and a smile, Dobyns is the one-woman operation known as the Botetourt Resource Center. It's her job to put the elderly, the indigent, the ailing and the down-and-out in touch with the resources and assistance that will help them make it to the next day. Business is booming.

"She's tenacious," said Pamela Kestner-Chappelear, president of the Council of Community Services in Roanoke, who hired Dobyns nearly a decade ago. "She's bound and determined to help people in need."

Dobyns has become a fixture in Botetourt County, helping it maintain a sense of community despite its growing population and increasing suburbanization. She's built a network of 34 churches, 27 businesses and agencies and nine civic organizations to aid the needy. When someone needs help in Botetourt, just about everybody knows to give Dobyns a call.

"We've got a gold mine here," said the Rev. Marina Gopadze, pastor of Buchanan Presbyterian Church. "She's a good girl. We take her for granted."

Dobyns said she gets about 10 phone calls for help per day, which means she has to place a round of phone calls herself -- to those churches, businesses, civic organizations and agencies -- all to find the right person or program.

"Things happen that I have no control over -- when I need something, stuff happens," she said the other day, taking a moment to rest after painting a door in her office. (Because she works on a shoestring budget, she has become handy with screwdrivers, hammers and paintbrushes.)

Dobyns, of Troutville, helps senior citizens navigate the paperwork to apply for Medicare payments. Puts volunteer laborers to work repairing the homes of the elderly and people with disabilities. Finds money so the poor can afford prescriptions. And helps the unemployed sharpen their interviewing skills and resumes.

And Dobyns' work doesn't cost taxpayers anything: Part of her job is finding enough donations to pay her salary and fund the office. Altogether, she has to raise about $45,000 each year.

Dobyns works out of a little brick building on a side street in Buchanan. When she was hired in 2000 to create the Resource Center, she had to kill bugs, paint the inside walls and pull up the carpet -- the building had been submerged in the flood of 1982. She furnished the place by grabbing the junk that people left out on the curb for trash pickup. "I scavenge everything," she said, noting that her desk and the nearby photocopier were donated by local businesses.

Since 2000, she has created a host of programs to aid the elderly and poor. She started a "recycling" program among the local churches: Whenever a Botetourt resident comes to her in need of something -- a refrigerator, for instance -- Dobyns e-mails the churches, and the following Sunday thousands of congregants are notified. Dobyns also coordinates the churches' food pantry, helps with Kroger's distribution of bread every Thursday, and works with one church to lend out used medical equipment such as crutches and wheelchairs. She's also the pipeline when people need free firewood or kerosene.

The Resource Center hosts driving lessons for senior citizens given by the sheriff's office, as well as aerobic classes and parties where the elderly can play Wii and hear guest lectures. On Wednesday, hair stylist Teresa Rothwell of Buchanan's Stylin Shed talked to senior citizens about hair care. Rothwell said she volunteered not only in order to help seniors, but to make Dobyns' acquaintance.

"I've heard her name in town -- all good stuff," Rothwell said. "Robyn's really trying to get seniors to do different things, and I thought it would be good to help, and it was also an opportunity to meet her."

Dobyns grew up in Pulaski County and obtained a bachelor's degree in psychology at Virginia Tech, then a master's degree in education from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Somewhere in her youth she learned to love fly-fishing, and she sings jazz and folk rock at sundry venues. She was working for Blue Ridge Behavioral Healthcare as a substance abuse prevention specialist when, she said, she saw a two-line Help Wanted ad:

"It said, 'Someone needed to start a resource center in Botetourt County.' Nothing else. It looked like an adventure to me."

The first person to contact her, she said, had terminal cancer and no health insurance.

"Another lady came in and she was starving," Dobyns recalled. "She lived with rats and no heat." The woman, a widow, was unaware that she was eligible for Social Security survivor benefits.

Today, Dobyns is the case manager for 237 people, which means she helps them on a regular basis. In nearly 10 years, she has helped thousands of Botetourt County residents. And the caseload is getting bigger, she said, because many young people caught up in the foreclosure crisis are asking for help.

Earlier this year, the Foundation for Roanoke Valley gave the Botetourt Resource Center a $50,000 grant to help Dobyns renovate the little brick building, expand programs for senior citizens, replace her 10-year-old computer and hire an assistant. The renovations, senior programs and technology update were easy enough. Finding help has been a problem. Dobyns hired first one assistant, then another, but both had to quit for varying reasons. So, for now, she continues as a one-woman operation, and she said she has no plans to slow down.

"When someone gets food and they're so grateful they hug you -- when they're grateful for something that everyone else takes for granted -- you know you're doing something right," she said.