He'd expected to rake lawns for seniors. Instead he poured cement.

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Tom Baxter, 80, taught two high school students how to pour cement when he needed to fix his walkway but could not do it himself any more.

When teens signed up to volunteer with the Saratoga Senior Center, they expected to rake leaves or mow lawns.

Instead, two high school students were matched with a retired construction worker in Schuylerville who taught them how to pour concrete.

It was part of a strategy for the senior center. It is trying to reach seniors throughout Saratoga County. Seniors in Saratoga Springs tend to have more access to public transportation, stores and medical offices, so there is more need in the rural towns. The senior center is also trying to provide meaningful experiences for volunteers in which they develop connections with seniors. That's the best way to keep them, said volunteer coordinator Lawrence Barisic, who has an almost perfect volunteer retention rate, with 150 active volunteers helping throughout the year.

All that led to the senior center telling Tom Baxter of Schuylerville that if he ever needed help, he should call.

At age 78, he wanted to replace a wooden platform at the bottom of his front stairs with a concrete pad.

The platform was rotting, so he had to do something. But a back injury meant he could no longer lift bags of cement.

"I wouldn't have anybody doing it for me if I could do it, even if it took me ten times longer," he said.

Then he recalled that offer from the Saratoga Senior Center. So he gave them a call. And soon he had two young men on his lawn, ready for anything.

"Neither of them knew one end of a shovel from the other. They’d never done anything like this. That did not stop them one little bit," Baxter said.

As he explained, they poured gravel, fetched his manual concrete mixer, poured in the bags Baxter couldn't lift and the correct amount of water, and then made the cement. Baxter had a wonderful time, explaining the intricacies of concrete pouring while they smoothed it out.

"It was a one-day job because of how good they turned out to be," he said. "You can't believe what a good job they did. And for two guys who had never touched cement before!"

Volunteer Stephen Verral, now 18, may never pour cement again. But the job left him eager to volunteer again.

"It hooked me onto it," he said from the University of Michigan, where he is a freshman. "He acted like a mentor to us – he taught us how to do all the cementing. It was a good experience."

And while he also did a lot of lawn care that summer, it was the cement job that won him over.

"You come out of it with such a great feeling – just that you helped someone, you made a connection, they even helped you – he taught us something new," he said.

And so, more than a year later, he signed up at once when Baxter decided it was time to move to a retirement community. Baxter was thrilled to see Verral again, even though it was for a more ordinary task: fighting to smooth out his rug and arrange his heavy furniture. He peppered his young helpers with questions about college, scholarships, and their plans for the future. They embraced him as a mentor.

Baxter had intended to live in his Schuylerville house forever, calling retirement homes "God's lobby," where people wait for death.

But at 80 he had to admit he couldn't mow and snowblow anymore.

"The last time I used the snowblower, it knocked me down. Thank goodness I wasn't hurt. But I could see the future," he said.

While he lived in Schuylerville, another volunteer drove him to the grocery store and medical offices. There was no bus.

"I had to walk down a big hill and back. Me legs couldn't make it," he said.

Now the bus stops outside his door in Ballston Spa, and he has a scooter, which he uses to get to stores in the village. The bus takes him to his favorite fishing spot on the Kayaderosseras Creek. With the move completed, he doesn't really need help anymore. But he doesn't want to say goodbye to volunteer Karen Billman, who has been driving him to appointments for so long.

"She's more than a volunteer. She's become a friend," he said.

They plan to keep meeting for lunch or the occasional long drive when he needs to go back to Schuylerville.

And as he's enjoyed newfound independence in the village, he's planning to join the ranks of volunteers at the Senior Center.

Barisic wants to pair him with high school students who will take him to a job site, where he’ll supervise bigger projects. Baxter wants to run classes at the center, teaching home repair.

"There's nothing in your house I don't know," he said. "I can't do it anymore but I can tell you what you need to do."

He used to teach at local schools, many decades ago. When he mentioned this to Barisic, saying that side gig was the happiest time of his life, Barisic didn't hesitate.

"I invite you to impart this wisdom," he said. "It would be well attended."

Baxter hadn't expected that opportunity. But after a moment, he said it could make him very happy.

"You need a purpose," he said. "I think the biggest problem with older people like myself is you become yesterday. When you volunteer, you take part in the world."