Pearl Tap rocks and soothes a baby as a volunteer at Spectrum Health Helen DeVos Children's Hospital.Pearl Tap sits quietly in a chair on the third floor of Spectrum Health Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital, rocking a baby girl in her arms.

The baby coos and drifts in and out of sleep as Pearl, a Spectrum volunteer of more than 30 years, cradles the preemie in her left arm.

Pearl, who turns 80 in June, looks beyond the wires, tubes and other artifacts of health problems in the neonates she cares for in the NICU. In her eyes, they are all perfect children.

She treasures them like precious pearls, holding them, rubbing them, comforting them and loving them.

They may be tiny – this baby clocks in at less than 5 pounds – but Pearl’s heart is big.

“Aww, sweetie,” Pearl says in a voice as soft as the baby’s white fleece hat. “How are you today?”

The baby predictably doesn’t answer, but Pearl believes communication is still taking place.

“It’s so good for her when she’s awake to have human interaction,” Pearl says. “All this rocking is putting her right back to sleep.”

After three decades of volunteering in other Spectrum Health arenas – the volunteer office, pushing wheelchairs, visiting families in the surgical waiting room, delivering mail – Pearl says she’s enjoying her duties in the NICU, where she’s worked since last summer.

She walks through the corridors of the 100-plus bed infant intensive care unit in her plum-colored volunteer smock, listening intently for the sound of a crying baby.

When Pearl hears an infant, she enters the room, and rocks, talks and sings to the baby until he or she drifts into dream land.

“I think about what the baby is going through or what the parents are going through,” the Grandville resident says.

On this particular Wednesday, Ronda Dennis, RN, approaches Pearl in the hallway and asks if she’d like to hold a baby down the hall.

“She’s had a lack of visitors,” Ronda tells Pearl. “They live out of town.”

Pearl follows Ronda into a room. Ronda picks up the swaddled infant, and tenderly hands her to Pearl.

Pearl Tap rocks and soothes a baby as a volunteer at Spectrum Health Helen DeVos Children's Hospital.Pearl’s ageless motherly instincts flow. She cradles the infant as if she were her own.

“Sometimes I pray for the baby when I’m sitting here,” Pearl says. “You hope that everything turns out all right for each one of them. I talk to them, especially if they’re crying and you’re trying to calm them down. Sometimes I sing a lullaby.”

Pearl’s volunteering has been an endless melody. She’s logged more than 6,600 hours at Spectrum. She also volunteers as a librarian at The Potter’s House school and mentors for 70×7 Life Recovery, a ministry for people recovering from drugs, alcohol or prison. She previously volunteered at her children’s schools and served as a church organist.

Her husband, Arvin, to whom she’s been married for almost six decades, jokingly calls her a professional volunteer.

“I’m committed and I like to stay busy,” Pearl explains. “I’ve been blessed and so I feel I have to bless somebody else.”

Pearl’s blessings sparkle in her eyes–namely when she talks about her four children, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

“I have experience,” she says, as she pats the baby in her arms. “I like to help people. And for me, it has to be meaningful and fulfilling.”

Volunteer services manager Kim Francis praised Pearl’s role in the Spectrum family.

“Her dedication is just amazing to me,” Francis says. “She is so helpful and kindhearted. We miss her in the volunteer office, but I’m thrilled to know she’s still in the system. She definitely is like part of our family.”