IS THIS grandmother Oxford’s hardest working volunteer?

Retirement is a time many begin slowing down, but 77-year-old Terrie Reynolds continues to help out at two hospitals and a charity shop six days a week.

She is now urging others to take a leaf out of her book and reap the rewards of helping others with what time they have to offer - but says they don’t need to do quite as much as she does.

Cancer survivor Ms Reynolds, of Pheasant Walk, Littlemore, volunteers at the Helen and Douglas House shop in Rose Hill, as well as the Churchill and John Radcliffe Hospitals, often working up to five hours a day.

She said: “When I retired at 63 I needed to do something with my time, so I went into volunteering. I’m not a sit-at-home person. I like to be out and meeting people.

“Volunteering is very rewarding and you get a really good social life. I’ve made friends at the places I work and we get together and go out for dinner.

“I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t do voluntary work.”

When working at the shop, Ms Reynolds’s role includes working on the till and keeping the jewellery in check. At the hospitals she works as a receptionist.

At the Churchill Hospital, a centre of excellence for cancer services, Ms Reynolds has been able to draw on her own experiences surviving breast cancer twice to support others.

She said: “So many people have to come in for treatment for weeks on end and you end up becoming friends.

“People come in feeling sad but you have a chat and a laugh and they leave a different person. You meet so many lovely people and they’re so grateful.”

Ms Reynolds said she believes many people are nervous about volunteering and urged people to just give it a go.

She said: “Anybody can do it. Even if you do just two hours a week you meet people and get the benefits. If everybody volunteered it would be amazing.”

The Helen and Douglas House shop in Rose Hill currently has about a dozen volunteers and the charity is always on the lookout for more.

Manager Sarah Worral said: “Terrie really goes above and beyond.

“She will come in and help when she knows I’m going to be on my own. She will sometimes bring us lunch and things like that.

“She’s really integral to the running of the shop.

“It’s lovely to have the sort of volunteers that we have here and they’re really important.”

Those interested in volunteering with Helen and Douglas House can pop into on of the charity shops to express an interest.

The total number of volunteers working at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust is about 1,200.