This originally appeared in The News & Observer:
At various points in his 55 years, Alex Alexis of Wendell has been a nurse, an auto-shop owner, a hospital worker and a homebuilder. He currently is a maintenance man for seven schools in eastern Wake County.
The native of Haiti also has studied to be an X-ray technician and a licensed mechanic, and now he is going to school to become a heating and cooling expert.
Yet among all the hats Alexis has worn, it's the one with the Red Cross on it that has made him the happiest. He has volunteered with the organization for 30-plus years.
"Helping somebody means more to me than a paycheck," said Alexis, who moved to the United States in 1979. "The gratification to see a person come out of one environment and move to another and live a better life, that's rewarding."
On Saturday, Alexis will make his second trip back to Haiti as a Red Cross volunteer since an earthquake in January 2010 killed tens of thousands of people, including some of his cousins.
Right after the quake, Alexis was the first volunteer of the Triangle Red Cross to head to Haiti. He worked for a month, sometimes 24 hours a day, as a translator on the USNS Comfort, a hospital ship on which some of the injured were treated.
He was thrilled to also put his nursing training to use on the ship. Alexis has been unable to work as a nurse in the United States because his school records were destroyed during a 1983 revolt in Haiti.
On the upcoming weeklong trip, it will be his eight-year career as a Wake County builder that he'll put to good use. Alexis was one of 10 Red Cross volunteers across the nation chosen to work with 420 others as part of the Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter Habitat for Humanity Work Project in L?og?ne. The Carters will attend, too.
The group hopes to build 100 homes in five days. Across Haiti, more than 600,000 people still live in displacement camps. L?og?ne was the epicenter of the earthquake, and more than 90 percent of its buildings were destroyed.
During the 2010 mission, Alexis stepped foot on land only once, and what he saw of his homeland left him devastated.
"That first week, when I called home, I was crying, and I didn't know I was crying," Alexis said. "I was so overwhelmed to see the conditions people were living in, young and old; it was heartbreaking.
"I had to get some counseling on board," he said. "I realized I wasn't the only one; all of these people were crying. It was hard for all of us."
What will be hard this time are the labor and the living conditions for the volunteers, who will stay in tents and have no access to running water. But Alexis isn't afraid of any of that.
"When I feel like I have no control over anything, when I see people in need and I can't help them, that's going to frighten me," he said.
The path to N.C.
In Haiti, where the top 1 percent owns 50 percent of the wealth, the Alexis family was middle class, although the relatives who still live there - an uncle and a cousin - are part of the elite. They live in a gated community and have a maid and butler who drive their own cars.
Alexis' brother Joseph, the oldest of the five children, in 1975 became the first black graduate of a recently desegregated college in Montreal. At graduation, Canadian officials asked him to name what he'd like as a gift, and he wanted his family to be allowed to join him.
Alexis, the third child, and one younger brother chose to remain in Haiti with a grandmother. Alexis got a nursing degree from a military school so he could support them.
He began his association with the Red Cross after graduation, being on call to ride a motorcycle to accident victims in a country with no paramedics.
In 1979, Alexis moved to New York, where he worked in hospitals, trained to be an X-ray technician and ultimately owned an auto-repair shop. He also was the director of disaster-relief services for the Red Cross there.
When he married his second wife, Madeline, who was born in the United States but whose parents are Dominican, the couple considered moving to Canada. She changed her mind when a snowstorm during a visit there buried their car.
They moved in 1998 to North Carolina, which they had come to love after vacationing here. They wanted to raise their daughter, Marlyse, in a quiet setting, which is why they bought a home in Wendell after living briefly in what Alexis called a drug-infested part of Raleigh.
An 'amazing person'
As a Red Cross volunteer in the Triangle, Alexis managed shelters during the tornadoes in April. He especially helped Shaw University students taking shelter at Southeast Raleigh High School, said Tracie Brown, the Triangle's Red Cross director of disaster relief.
"He is an absolutely amazing person, one of the most hardest-working, genuine, loving people," Brown said. "The minute you meet him, you know he's living for the right reasons. He really understands what he's here for."
Brown is exactly right. The minute I met Alexis, his joy was infectious. His work ethic, as he explained his 12-hour daytime jobs and his nighttime schoolings, astonishing. His devotion to God, inspiring.
"There's only a few times you could see me down, but not too many," he said. "It is a gift straight from God, because things can get tough, and I just keep on going. I rely on God heavily."
A few years ago, Alexis, who speaks Spanish as well as French, English and Creole, felt led to start and attend a church for Hispanics in the area.
In his "spare time," you can find him going to the aid of widows, a biblical tenet.
"All of the single moms, the women who don't have husbands, I go help them. I fix things," he said in his still-heavy accent. " 'How much I owe you?' they say. Nothing.
"That's how I live my life. That's how I receive my blessing."
bwheeler@newsobserver.com or 919-829-4825
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