Pam Ortega went to get help at a food bank and stayed on to help others.

She doesn't have a paying job. But she puts in up to 60 hours a week volunteering at New Hope Ministries and at Senior High Rise Food Bank.

"I don't have a job right now. I don't have plans to work for money," Ortega said. "The Lord just takes care of me."

Ortega, 47, is the Minoru Yasui Community Volunteer Award winner for November.

She insisted she is sharing the honor with her husband, Mi chael, because he helps a lot, too.

But it's her parents who taught her to give back.

"I prefer to give than receive," she said. "Just to see the faces, the happiness, the contentment - to know that you're helping somebody. There's not enough of that. That's what I get out of it. I don't need the money."

Ortega speaks rapidly when talking about her volunteerism. She has been a volunteer at Senior High Rise Food Bank about four years.

"Let me tell you what happened. I wasn't too good at money," she said. "I actually went there for food. A lady working there, Virginia, said she had seen me at our church. She asked me how I'd like to help out. I said sure. Since that time, I've never left."

She visits with senior citizens who come to the food bank. She sorts food. She carries boxes of groceries to cars for the elderly.

Ortega is a Chicago native who moved to Colorado 20 years ago.

"When I was a little girl, I went up to the mountains and I loved them," she said. "I knew I was going to move out here."

She was waiting tables when Michael Ortega came in to eat after he got off work. He's an electrician.

They hit it off and got married.

"I guess I was just lucky, huh?" she said. She and Michael were looking for a church to attend when they started going to New Hope Ministries in Lakewood.

As they became more involved, Ortega got the idea that her husband should build a replica of a mountain cabin inside the church for a coffee shop and bookstore. "She envisioned what she wanted. I said no. That's a lot of time," Michael said. "She insisted." It took Michael about four months to complete the task with help from the couple's children - Louise, 17, and Mike, 16.

Ortega attends church services a couple days a week. But she's there many other times as well. "Whenever people need me to go in there, I open it up," Ortega said. "It's my job - to be there to help the people."