For Carol Buchanan, giving back isn’t an occasional gesture, it’s a sustained, twenty-year commitment that has shaped both her community and the next generation within her own family. For two decades, Carol has served as a volunteer driver for Meals on Wheels of Warwick, delivering meals to homebound neighbors week after week, year after year. That kind of consistency is rare, and it speaks to a depth of dedication that goes beyond a single donation or one-time event.

What makes Carol’s involvement especially meaningful is how she has turned her volunteer work into a teaching moment. She regularly brings her granddaughter Kylie along on her route, mentoring her in real time about what it means to give back. Kylie has become such a capable helper that Carol notes she could practically run her own route once she’s old enough to drive, a detail that captures something important: Carol isn’t just serving her community, she’s actively building the next generation of people who will serve it too. When Meals on Wheels of Warwick celebrated its 50th anniversary, Carol was there, celebrating alongside an organization she has personally supported for nearly half of its existence.

Carol’s community involvement extends well beyond a single cause. She has been a visible and consistent supporter of local initiatives led by organizations like the Warwick Lions Club, using her platform to recognize and amplify the people doing the work, from celebrating the years-long volunteer effort behind Warwick’s new Pump Track, a project that took sustained community organizing to bring to life and now gives local kids a place to ride and play, to spotlighting the Lions Club’s Pediatric Cancer Fundraising walk. In both cases, Carol made a point of publicly thanking the organizers by name, helping ensure their efforts were seen and valued by the wider community.

Carol shows up consistently for vulnerable neighbors through two decades of meal deliveries, invests in the future by mentoring the next generation of volunteers, and uses her voice to celebrate the community organizers around her. That combination of hands-on service, sustained time commitment, and genuine community advocacy is what this award is meant to recognize, not a single act of generosity, but an agent who has made giving back a core part of who she is.

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We nominate someone who gives back. BHGRE Green Team is proud to recognize agents like Carol Buchanan whose commitment to community reaches far beyond real estate. Know an agent making a difference? Reach out to talent@greenteamrealty.com

Thomas Folino spent 27 years coaching Warwick Boys Basketball and 37 years total coaching and teaching in the district. When he retired from the sideline, he did not step away from the program. He created a new role for himself, one that has now lasted longer than most coaching careers: director of the Warwick Boys Basketball Hall of Fame, a job he has held for 17 years.

A Committee of Mostly One

Tom runs the Hall of Fame largely on his own, with two longtime colleagues, including fellow agent and former coach Joe Mackey, helping evaluate nominations. Every year, he collects nominations, reviews candidates against the program’s criteria, orders the plaques, and writes a personal career synopsis for each inductee, digging through archives and gathering information himself rather than handing it off. He produces the printed program distributed at the ceremony, writes the press releases for local papers, updates the school website, and sends biannual emails to a running directory of every past inductee. The induction ceremony itself happens once a year, typically in January or February, at a home varsity basketball game.

A History of Turning a Tournament Into Real Help

Long before the Hall of Fame, Tom was already finding ways to give back through the game. As head coach, he ran an annual holiday tournament called Coaches Versus Cancer, raising two to three thousand dollars a year for the American Cancer Society. In his final four seasons, he reshaped it into Coaches for Community, redirecting the funds closer to home. One of those years, a Warwick family who lost their house to a fire received a $2,000 check from the tournament to help cover costs while their home was rebuilt.

Making Sure the Effort Mattered

For Tom, the Hall of Fame is not about nostalgia. It is about making sure former players know their years on the team meant something, and that current players watching the ceremony see what hard work and integrity actually look like over time. In 2017, the roles reversed for a night: Tom himself was inducted into the Hall of Fame as a coach, a recognition he did not find out about until the night it happened.

Nearly two decades after stepping onto the Warwick sideline for the first time, Tom is still finding new ways to give back to the community that shaped his career, now from behind a folder of nomination forms instead of a clipboard.

We nominate someone who gives back. BHGRE Green Team is proud to recognize agents like Thomas Folino whose commitment to community reaches far beyond real estate. Know an agent making a difference? Reach out to talent@greenteamrealty.com

A Foster Home, Not a Forever Home: How Rachel Marko Gives Dogs Their Next Chance

For about seven years, Rachel Marko has opened her home to dogs that have nowhere else to go. As a foster volunteer with Southern Paws, a local dog rescue, she has taken in dog after dog, not to keep them, but to get them ready for the family that will.

It started before Rachel had even met the dog who would change how she fosters. Arya came into her life during the first week of COVID, adopted sight unseen after another family’s plans fell through. Rachel didn’t get to meet her in person until she was already home. That leap of faith turned into a permanent bond, and these days it also shapes how often Rachel fosters. Arya prefers being the only dog in the house, so what used to be frequent fostering is now once or twice a year.

Where the Dogs Come From

Many of the dogs that land at Southern Paws travel a long way to get there. They come up from the southern United States, where free-roaming, unspayed, and unneutered dogs lead to litter after litter of puppies with nowhere to go. By the time they reach Rachel, they have already survived the hardest part. What they need next is visibility, structure, and someone willing to put in the work of getting them adoption-ready.

A Full-Time Job for a Few Weeks at a Time

Foster dogs are almost always high-energy, so a lot of Rachel’s time goes into exercise, often letting them run loose in her fenced yard until they finally settle. She brings them along wherever she can, not for convenience, but because every extra set of eyes on a foster dog is one more chance someone falls in love with them.

It is not simple work. New feeding schedules, vet visits, house-training a dog that has never lived indoors, managing a foster’s energy around her own pets. But Rachel has learned to see the hard parts as short-term. The dog in her house today will not be there in a month. That is the point.

The Reward Is in the Goodbye

Ask Rachel what makes seven years of fostering worth it, and it is not a single moment. It is the pattern repeating itself: a dog arrives unsure and overwhelmed, and a few weeks later leaves for a home that will keep it. She and her family have learned to be happy on the day a foster dog goes, because it means the work did exactly what it was supposed to do.

That is the kind of giving back that rarely gets noticed from the outside. No ceremony, no headline, just a family that keeps saying yes when a rescue needs somewhere for a dog to land.

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We nominate someone who gives back. BHGRE Green Team is proud to recognize agents like Rachel Marko whose commitment to community reaches far beyond real estate. Know an agent making a difference? Reach out to talent@greenteamrealty.com

Delivering More Than Meals: Walter Ross’s Quiet Commitment to Community

For the last 25 years, Walter Ross has given his time to the Warwick Humane Society. Fifteen years ago, he added another route to his week: delivering meals to neighbors who need them. Between the two, Walter has spent a quarter century showing up for the people and animals of his community, without ever making it about himself.

A Route That Takes an Hour, Twice

A few times a week, Walter drives one of five or six Meals on Wheels routes, delivering food prepared by St. Anthony’s Kitchen to homes out toward Pine Island. The drive alone takes an hour each way. At the Humane Society, his time goes toward hands on care and repair work, whatever the shelter needs that week.

It adds up to a real commitment, but Walter doesn’t talk about it in terms of hours or miles. He talks about the people he meets along the way.

The Animals He Won’t Forget

Ask Walter what makes the work rewarding, and two animals come up right away.

There’s Rufus, a dog who needs a strong, capable handler. Rufus earned his reputation as an escape artist, resourceful enough that he was next in line to come off the shelter’s alarm system. Then there’s a dog who came in with a collapsed back leg and went through a couple of operations. She’s walking more now, and she does it as a genuinely happy dog, with no idea of everything she’s overcome.

“She doesn’t know what she’s gone through,” Walter says. “That’s what’s rewarding, seeing her get there.”

Why He Started, Why He Stayed

Walter didn’t set out to volunteer. His wife was already involved with the Humane Society, and he decided to join her. What started as a way to spend time together became something he kept doing on his own, long after the initial reason faded into the background.

His Advice for Anyone Thinking About It

“You’re part of the community,” Walter says. “Give back as much as you can. If you have the time to commit to it, do it.”

For Walter, that’s what 25 years of volunteering comes down to. Not recognition or reward, but the small, steady moments of connection, a meal delivered, a dog who trusts him, a neighbor who’s glad to see a familiar face at the door.

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We nominate someone who gives back. BHGRE Green Team is proud to recognize agents like Walter Ross whose commitment to community reaches far beyond real estate. Know an agent making a difference? Reach out to talent@greenteamrealty.com

Big news from Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Green Team: James “Jimmy” Cosenza has officially capped in June 2026! From this point forward, every commission he earns is 100% his, no splits, no deductions. It is a milestone that reflects the kind of steady, hands-on work Jimmy brings to every transaction.

Jimmy has built his reputation one relationship at a time. Whether he is guiding a first-time buyer through their first offer or helping a seller price a home right in a shifting market, his straightforward approach and market knowledge make the difference. That kind of trust does not happen overnight. It is built one closing at a time.

🌱 What Reaching the Cap Really Means

At BHGRE Green Team, the cap is not just a number. It marks the point where an agent’s production speaks for itself. Agents who get here have put in the work, shown up for their clients, and closed the kind of deals that build long-term trust. For Jimmy, this moment reflects years of consistency and results that hold up over time.

💬 A Message From Geoffrey Green

Geoffrey Green, Broker and Founder of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Green Team, had this to say:

“Jimmy brings a level of reliability to this business that clients notice right away. He puts in the work, he knows how to close, and he does it the right way. This milestone is well earned.”

👉 Thinking about what a career at Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Green Team could look like for you? Find out more here.

Congratulations, Jimmy! 💚 This is your moment, and the whole Green Team is cheering you on.

Meet Alize Vazquez — BHGRE Green Team’s Newest Agent at the Warwick Office

Alize Vazquez has moved more than most people do in a lifetime. Six times, all across New Jersey — Paterson, Wayne, Verona, Hawthorne, and eventually Vernon. Each move taught her something. Not just about packing boxes or finding shortcuts to the grocery store, but about what it actually feels like to leave a place behind and figure out how to make a new one feel like home.

That experience is exactly why she got into real estate.

“I rented all my life yet that never stopped each place from being a home,” she says. “I want to help people find their community and find them something they can call home.”

Rooted in Vernon, Working in Warwick

Alize moved to Vernon, NJ about three years ago when her family was ready for a change from the more urban areas they had lived in before. The scenery stuck. The community stuck. The trails, the local events, the pace of life, all of it kept her here.

Today she lives in Vernon and works in the Warwick area, a stretch of the Hudson Valley and Skylands region she has spent the past few years getting to know well alongside her partner Jasmine. She knows what draws people to this area and what keeps them once they arrive.

That local fluency matters more than most people realize when choosing an agent. Alize is not learning the market from a map. She is living in it.

A Background Built on Service and People

Before real estate, Alize spent time in food service, and she is quick to point out how much that work shaped her. In a kitchen or behind a counter, detail matters. How you treat people matters. The atmosphere you create matters.

“I learned how important a friendly atmosphere and welcoming personality affects your community and potential clients,” she says. She also picked up experience in coding through work with a startup, giving her a comfort with technology that carries into how she stays organized and connected with clients.

She graduated from Vernon High School in 2024, making her one of the newer voices on the team but her perspective on what people need from a home, and what it costs emotionally to move, is anything but inexperienced.

How She Found Green Team

Alize did not come to BHGRE Green Team through a job listing or a website. She met Tom Folino, a fellow Green Team agent, while working at a local cafe. He saw something in her. They built a relationship. That relationship gave her the confidence to get her license and take the next step.

“Everyone has been extremely welcoming as well as knowledgeable,” she says. “I enjoy being around others who are uplifting and appreciate the efforts put in to make Green Team a friendly environment.”

What drew her in as a new agent was the mentorship program, the quality of training, and an environment where she actually felt supported. Those are not small things, especially when you are starting out.

The Way She Thinks About Homes

Ask Alize what drives her and she will tell you it is community.

“I find community to be one of the most underrated parts of self growth,” she says. “Your life is influenced by what you are around. I believe everyone should be able to find the environment that they flourish in most.”

That shows up in how she thinks about the work. Whether a client is drawn to the quietness of the Skylands, the energy of a city, or somewhere in between. Alize believes there is a right fit for every person, and her job is to help them find it.

She also brings a genuine interest in financial literacy and personal finance to her work. She understands assets, leverage, and loans, and wants to help clients not just find a home but understand the financial decision they are making when they do.

And she knows the emotional side too. Moving is stressful. It is also exciting. She has felt both, more than once.

“From the stress of moving to the happiness of a new chapter,” she says. “I want to help make the process as smooth as I can possibly make it.”

Outside of Work

When she is not working, Alize is out in the community. Car shows, festivals, anything that gets people out the door, she is there. She is also looking to get into volunteering in the near future, continuing to build the kind of local presence that has always mattered to her.

Connect With Alize

Alize Vazquez is based at the BHGRE Green Team Warwick office, serving buyers and renters across Orange County, NY and Sussex County, NJ.

BHGRE Green Team greenteamrealty.com | (914) 443-0065

BHGRE Green Team serves Orange County, NY; Rockland County, NY; Sussex County, NJ; and Passaic County, NJ.