Michael Prest didn't set out to become one of the most familiar faces at The LGBTQ+ Center of Las Vegas. He set out to find a spot for a folding table.
At the time, he was volunteering with Silver State Equality during the push for the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, and he'd been asked to set up a table to collect signatures. He called all over the city. Nobody would allow it. Flipping through the phone book in desperation, he found a listing for an organization he didn't know existed.
After a couple of transfers, he reached the Center's director at the time, a man named Brian. Brian said yes. The table went up, and something else got started.
“I’m Never Going to Get This”
Later that month, after wrapping a Pride shift for Silver State Equality, he wandered the festival grounds and stopped at the Center’s booth. Jason Sherman, who heads the Gay Men’s Forum, was running it and invited him to the meetings.
Through the forum, he learned the Center needed hands for its food drive, so he pitched in. Then the director of volunteers asked him to come inside and work the front desk. He said no. She kept asking, and kept telling him how badly they needed the help, until he agreed to one day a week.
That first shift, by his own account, was rough. “I was petrified,” he says. “I thought this was way too much to learn.” He didn’t yet know what programs the Center offered and felt completely lost. “I thought, I’m never going to get this.”
Wherever They Need Me
He got it. Today the front desk is his home base, and he’s a certified advocate for the Center. He’s also taking classes to become certified to work with victims of crime, helping the people who come through the doors find the assistance they need.
Then there are the events. At children’s programs like this week’s trunk-or-treat, he sets up his button-making machine and lets kids design their own. During the coat drives, for kids and adults alike, he’s there handing out coats. “Wherever they need me, that’s where I go,” he says, “whether it’s on site or off-site.”
The One Who Came Back
Asked about a moment that has stayed with him, he doesn’t hesitate. A few months ago, a young man walked in after coming out to his parents. They had kicked him out. He was living on the street with no money, and he had been beaten and robbed.
Prest was the only advocate on duty. He took the young man aside, and they talked for more than an hour. Shelters terrified him, and he didn’t want to go. Eventually Prest convinced him to try one, got him food and clothes, and sent him on his way.
About two months later, the young man came back to say thank you. He had a job. He had met his partner at the shelter, and the two had gotten an apartment together. “That doesn’t happen often,” Prest says. “That stands out.”
People Matter
Prest has volunteered most of his life, starting as a kid, and says he’s never been prouder of where he gives his time. What most of Las Vegas doesn’t realize, he says, is that the Center serves everyone who walks through the door. “Gay, straight, bi, trans, it doesn’t matter,” he says. “We’re there to be of help to the community, period.”
That open door is also the hardest part. So many people come in needing help, and some can’t be served because of money or because no program exists for what they need. “The frustration of not being able to do enough is annoying, to say the least,” he admits. What keeps him coming back is that the Center is there at all, and that the people who walk in learn somebody cares.
The work has changed him, too. He had never met a trans person before coming to the Center. Learning what trans people have gone through to become who they are, he says, opened his eyes to a world he hadn’t known.
His advice to anyone on the fence about volunteering: take the step. “It just enriches your life.”
The Award, and a Dragon Pin
He learned a couple of months ago that he’d been named this year’s Russell Davis Volunteer of the Year. Emily, the Center’s director of volunteers, had told him she planned to submit his name, so he knew it was possible. He was surprised anyway. The honor came with homework: recruit three people to speak on his behalf and film his own acceptance speech.
He never met Russell Davis, but he has heard about his work and calls it an honor to accept an award carrying his name.
He’s quick to share the credit. He points to Emily, who he says sets the tone for the entire front desk, and to Jimmy, who runs the library. He singles out the trans women who staff the desk and keep giving of themselves after everything they’ve faced. “There are so many volunteers there that really deserve the recognition,” he says.
As for next week’s 1920s-themed stage, nobody mentioned the theme until recently. He had already bought a new three-piece suit, his first in years. After more than two decades managing hotels and troubleshooting for Holiday Inn, then serving as a transit authority union president in Massachusetts, he once lived in suits. Thirteen years of laid-back Las Vegas changed that. He’ll wear the new suit anyway, with a dragon pin from his collection on the lapel. A zoot suit, he says, was never in the cards.