People We Meet: St. Anthony’s 93-year-old volunteer Beryl Voss, who never misses a shift

On a recent Monday morning, Beryl Voss, 93, walked from her Nob Hill apartment to St. Anthony’s Dining Room at 121 Golden Gate Ave. She is one of more than a dozen volunteers who serve brunch to hundreds of community members at the start of each week. 

Andre, a regular, threw his hands in the air at the sight of Voss. He usually comes in in the second half of the month, Voss said, surprised to see him so early in the month. Behind him, the clatter of trays moving across the buffet assembly line filled the cafeteria. 

On that Monday, Voss, clad in her embroidered St. Anthony’s apron (a gift from St. Anthony’s leaders who personalize aprons for volunteers after 10 years of service) was assigned to grab trays for the group of elderly and disabled community members seated in a separate section of the cafeteria. 

Her blonde bob swayed and her jewelry clacked as she nearly skipped across the dining hall to serve them, greeting her diners with a pat on the back or a squeeze of the shoulder. 

“I adore them all,” said Voss, who has been volunteering for a decade and says the interactions have become her “reason for being.”

Even before service started, she bounced around the cafeteria, wrapping cutlery in paper towels and catching up with other volunteers. 

Voss is a Bay Area native, born in 1932, four years before the Bay Bridge was built. She described what she imagines her birth was like for her parents, who lived in the East Bay but had plans to give birth in San Francisco. 

“I imagine (my mother) said to my father, Charles, I think I’m about ready to deliver,” Voss said with a giggle. “And so they had to get in line and wait for the ferry to come.”

It wasn’t until 50 years later that Voss would make the same trek across the bay — this time on the Bay Bridge — to permanently settle in the city where she was born. It had been her and her husband’s plan to move back to S.F., but they waited until their two children graduated high school.

The former office manager for a law firm, she has lived in Nob Hill since 1983, but feels far more connected to the Tenderloin, the tight-knit community she’s given back to since 2016. 

She’s come to know not just the guests’ faces and names, but their stories too. She calls them family. She keeps an eye out for people who didn’t show up to breakfast and checks in with them when they return. 

She pushes back on the general perception that the Tenderloin is a dangerous community. 

“It’s the least bit dangerous,” she said.

Voss described the one instance where she felt fear: While walking home from a volunteer shift, she spotted a man sitting on a street corner, holding a “large stick.” As she passed by the man, he shouted to get her attention. 

“I said ‘Yes?’’’ Voss said cheekily, while holding back a smile. “And he said ‘Nice hair!’ I wrote to my hairdresser saying, oh boy, I’ve got a compliment for you.”