But after the attack, something changed in Coger. He realized he wanted to give back to the community.

"Life is just too short," Coger said. "I think now is the time to start giving back while I can."

Coger has embarked, he said, on a mission to volunteer his time to his community, where he says there’s a lot of help needed.

"If you spend an hour or two with someone," he said, "you just might change their lives."

With a sagging economy and budgets being slashed in every industry and at every level of government, organizations private and public, small and large, have a greater need than ever for affordable, or even free, help to maintain their services. The struggling organizations and agencies of the area are hoping there would be more people like Coger around.

There’s no arguing that one of the strongest forces behind community services in Southeast Queens is the church.

Volunteer opportunities abound at Southeast Queens’ churches and other religious institutions. There are charity collections, home visitations for the elderly and infirm, educational programs and much clerical work to be done for the dizzying array of services these community pillars provide.

Tom Daniels, a deacon at New Jerusalem Baptist Church in Jamaica, said his church is always looking for help, and that there’s no better way to serve God than volunteering.

Most people think about the government agencies in their districts only as existing to serve them, but there are more sides to the story. One of the best ways private citizens can give back to their communities, in fact, is by volunteering for government agencies.

The offices of local elected officials and community boards can always use more help. When the PRESS asked about volunteering opportunities, most responses were of joy and glee.

"Yes, yes, we need volunteers!" said Lynette Velasco, aide to Councilman James Sanders who said that the office needs more administrative and computer help than anything. "Constituent work is the most significant thing for the councilman. Budgets are strained because of the economy, and we need people to help."

The easiest way to help out a community board, CB 13 District Manager Sally Martino-Fisher said, is by just coming by and offering help with administrative work or for the several monthly meetings each board’s various committees hold. A more committed way to help, she said, is by becoming an actual board member.

One of the most immediate and critical forms of volunteer work is that available in local police precincts. But rather than just do desk work, most volunteers at the NYPD are on the streets, helping keep things in order.

Most volunteers at the 105th Precinct, Community Affairs Officer Nicole Dean said, join the precinct’s Auxiliary Police force. "They’re the eyes and ears of the Police Department," Dean said. The same goes for most precincts, said Sgt. Clifton Chin of the NYPD’s Auxiliary Police Section headquarters in Kew Gardens.

Auxiliary Police are uniformed and shield-carrying NYPD-trained officers who carry handcuffs, batons and radios and provide a police presence at low-security community events like church programs and school events. They also do neighborhood patrols, on foot, by bicycle or by car.

Another good way to contribute to public safety in Southeast Queens is to start or join a volunteer ambulance corps. The Queens Village/Hollis/Bellerose Volunteer Ambulance Corps, based in Queens Village, is one of the area’s most active.

The Queens Public Library, based in offices at its Central Branch on Merrick Boulevard, is a huge source of volunteer opportunities in Southeast Queens, mostly focused on educational work. Volunteers at the Central Branch and the library’s satellite branches, Volunteer Coordinator Lynn Owens said, logged 40,000 hours of work in the last year. The work varies, Owens said, from shelving and administrative work to help with literacy programs and special events, and the library usually matches work to people’s interests and skills.

The National Council of Negro Women, for example, is looking for volunteers for its expanding teen after-school program, which started on Oct. 1. The program offers job readiness, computer literacy, creative design and entrepreneurship workshops, as well as homework assistance and other educational, cultural and recreational activities.

The myriad of health services in Southeast Queens, public and private, can always use more help.

The St. Albans Veterans Affairs Extended Care Facility, a huge complex enclosed by Linden, Merrick and Baisley Boulevards, takes in a lot of volunteers in its adult day health care program especially. Most senior centers in Southeast Queens happily accept volunteers for events and daily work, as do most private non-profit clinics.

The AIDS Center of Queens County, which has a branch office and four satellite offices in downtown Jamaica, is a non-profit agency that provides services for those infected with HIV and AIDS.

One of the biggest agencies doing work for the handicapped in Southeast Queens is the Association for the Advancement of the Blind and Retarded, which is opening a new Day Treatment and Day Habilitation Center in downtown Jamaica on Oct. 19. The AABR, a 56-year-old organization that runs seven residences in Southeast Queens, helps the blind and mentally disabled with daily living skills.

One of the best ways for people to protect the health of the land of Southeast Queens is by helping maintain a community garden. There are 19 in the area now, and up to 13 of them will remain for the long run, as a result of a recent deal by the City and State that is letting the rest get cemented over for development. To find out how to get involved with a community garden in the area, or even start a new one, people can call Green Thumb, the Parks Department agency that provides equipment and services for local community gardeners, or The Trust For Public Land, a non-profit agency that tries to acquire city-owned green spaces to keep it from being developed.

There a lot of innovative ways to volunteer to help the kids of Southeast Queens besides just after-school programs. The Hip Hop Summit Youth Council, for example, is a youth-based organization that founder Charles Fisher hopes will change the face of the hip hop industry for the better, thus providing more positive role models for area kids.

For those looking for more traditional ways to help kids, there’s the LP Fam Youth Organization, a South Ozone Park-based organization named after its Lincoln Park base of operations in which kids participate in recreational and educational activities. LP Fam’s main activity is in its baseball, basketball and football teams, in which all the coaches in the teams work on a volunteer basis, founder and executive director Paul Cox said.

"Anyone who wants to give a positive sermon to the kids, we’re looking for them," said Cox, who’s trying to start a weekly motivational workshop series for area kids next month.