At Wurth USA we always enjoy sharing stories of our team members’ positive impact on their local communities. Tom Robinson, a valued sales rep out of Southern California who will reach 12 years with us later this August, has been honored with a local award named in his recognition for his nearly 10 years of volunteering for his local high school. The “Tom Robinson Trojan Award for Service and Character” was founded in 2019 at Hillcrest High School in Riverside, California.
The award, given annually to a football player
and a track and field athlete, is given to the student who, while they may or may not be the fastest or best athlete, puts in hard work every day and exemplifies what a ‘team player’ is.The annual winners of the Tom Robinson Award also exemplify what Tom brings day in and day out to Wurth USA.
“I always push leadership; just being able to work with everyone from my Wurth teammates to my customers,” Tom said. “When a kid tells me they can’t do something I say ‘why’ and let them know they CAN do it. It’s the same at Wurth when a fellow rep or a customer comes to me saying they can’t do something I say, ‘why not’ and start working with them.”
By naming the award after Tom, Hillcrest High acknowledged his years of volunteerism and extraordinary contributions to the Riverside community. Tom began his volunteering efforts for Hillcrest back in 2015 when his sons were high school athletes, and he would take pictures of their games and post them to a local Facebook group. Soon, that small Facebook group with a dozen or so uploaded images became a vital part of the school community and morphed into an Instagram account with thousands of followers posting weekly Instagram Live post-game interviews with football and track athletes with dozens of students chipping in however they can.
“It started to have a family feel to it; I’m just having so much fun,” Tom said. “What I hear the most from the parents is ‘thank you.’”
Tom will use his phone and a semi-professional-grade camera, and along with his group of student volunteers, take hundreds, and sometime thousands of pictures of local football games and track/field meets. Tom mentioned that other than taking the pictures to benefit the student athletes, some of which have used the pictures and videos Tom has taken for college submissions, one of his favorite aspects of his volunteerism is teaching the incoming student volunteers how to use the camera or their phones to capture the best shot.
“Part of the fun is when the kids who take the pictures get competitive themselves and see who can take the best picture,” Tom said. “After years of doing these, the kids who graduate into the high school and work with me come into it calling me ‘Coach Tom;’ it’s the best.”
Long before he had an award named after him, Tom’s journey with volunteer work began long before he joined Wurth USA, driven by a genuine desire to make a difference in his community. Over the years, he has devoted countless hours to various volunteer-coaching causes, dating back to volunteering at his local parcs and recreation in the 1980’s and then a traveling basketball league in the 1990’s. Fast forward to today, and based on his pattern of teaching his fellow reps, coaching, and volunteering, there’s no wonder why Hillcrest High named their award for service and character after Tom Robinson.
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