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GREENSBORO — The day after Travis Roberts arrived in Greensboro last year, he shipped out to help victims of Hurricane Ike.

He finished his internship Sunday with the Salvation Army of Greensboro and plans to spend his vacation volunteering with the Salvation Army in Maine.

From there, Roberts moves on to Atlanta for two years of training to become a corps officer, with hopes of leading his own post some day.

The son of two Salvation Army ministers, Roberts, 25, planned on being a sports journalist for ESPN.

But something happened at a Salvation Army conference in Florida. Fresh off nearly a year at the Salvation Army’s War College in Canada, he had worked with the poor and the addicted and spent a night on the streets in the worst part of Vancouver to see what it’s like to be homeless.

The speaker was talking about a popular Salvation Army axiom: “The need is the call.”

“I just got this flood of memories of things I had seen in Vancouver,” Roberts recalled.

People half-naked, starved, addicted, lost.

“I’ve been seeing the need every day for the past eight months,” Roberts told himself.

It was then that he “kissed ESPN goodbye” and fully embraced a life with the Salvation Army.

He worked at McDonald’s while volunteering with the Salvation Army in Maine. He worked as a barista, making coffee at Starbucks, while volunteering for the youth program in Charlotte.

Then, he spent a year here, working with Maj. Paul Egan at the Salvation Army of Greensboro to learn about running a post.

“This guy, he’s really got a heart for the mission of the Salvation Army,” Egan said. “But he’s not all passion.”

Roberts also has the common sense and good skills to one day lead his own post, Egan said.

He remembers when Roberts first arrived. The Salvation Army was sending a mobile unit to help Hurricane Ike victims in Texas. Egan couldn’t go, so he sent his new second-in-command. Roberts ended up sleeping in a minivan for part of that mission because there was no room elsewhere.

“I’m impressed by how cool he is with those things,” Egan said. “He takes those things in stride. He’s in it for the work and loves it.”

Roberts credits his parents for instilling in him a passion for this type of ministry.

“That passion that when you see that person in the gutter from a night of drinking, you just want to cry for them,” he said.

And you want to help them.

When he gets his own post, Roberts would like to show his community that the Salvation Army is more than a social service organization.

A church lies at the heart of the soup kitchens and food pantries and homeless shelters that communities typically associate with the Salvation Army, he said.

“We need to be out on the streets, ministering to people,” he said.

Roberts will get more time to pack for his next mission than he did for Ike. He leaves for Atlanta on Wednesday, three days after his farewell sermon.

Contact Jennifer Fernandez at 373-7064 or jennifer.fernandez@news-record.com