LOOKING FOR TROUBLE : RED CROSS VOLUNTEER ON THE ROAD WITH DISASTERS.

Byline: Carol Bidwell Daily News Staff Writer

If you need Frank Glorioso, look for the guy who's looking for trouble.

Glorioso, 42, of Agoura Hills was among the more than 6,200 volunteers who formed the frontline forces of the American Red Cross this spring, heading for the rising floodwaters in Northern California and the Midwest as families were running for higher ground.

Before shelters, communications centers, disaster headquarters and field kitchens could be opened, the Red Cross depended on Glorioso, a three-year volunteer who owns his own Agoura Hills communications firm, to run telephone lines, bring in cellular phones and pagers and establish links with local phone companies so rescue and evacuation operations could be coordinated.

Glorioso, 42, packed his gear and left home Jan. 3 - and barely has been home since.

He spent six weeks coordinating Red Cross communications in the flooded Sacramento Delta towns of Yuba City, Modesto, Stockton and others. Floodwaters in most communities have since receded.

He was home for little more than a week before he was called again, then headed east to help flood victims in the Midwest and Southeast. He spent two weeks in Peoria, Ill., did a three-week stint in Cincinnati; spent another three weeks in Huntington and Charleston, W. Va.

Then he worked for a week or so at Red Cross headquarters in Falls Church, Va., testing communications satellites so they'll be ready for the next disaster - which may be brewing already as record spring snowfalls begin to melt and threaten to wipe out farms and towns in North Dakota and Minnesota.

``When they don't need me is when I come home,'' said Glorioso, who finally arrived home April 6 to a staggering pile of mail with a suitcase full of dirty laundry.

``It's kind of nice to be home and sleep in your own bed,'' he said. ``But if they called me today, I'd probably pack and go again.''

The damage he's seen in his travels for the Red Cross this year has been tremendous, Glorioso said.

``There are some areas that are completely devastated, where people have lost everything,'' Glorioso said. ``In one town near Cincinnati, 300 or 400 yards from the river, there are water marks nine or 10 feet high on buildings. You can see how high the river rose. It was just an awful lot of rain in a short period of time, and there was no place for it to go.''

A disaster services volunteer with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department from 1988 to 1994 and a member of the Agoura Hills Disaster Committee since 1980, Glorioso is also a ham radio operator and coordinated the Agoura Hills arson-watch program for a decade.

It was the January 1994 Northridge Earthquake that thrust Glorioso into his life as a Red Cross volunteer. Hours after the shaking stopped, he showed up at a Red Cross shelter in Simi Valley to help, and the gesture wasn't forgotten.

Several months later, the Red Cross invited him to become a permanent volunteer. Since then, he's undergone hours of disaster and communications training, and has helped coordinate disaster communications in the 1995 New Orleans floods and 1996 Pennsylvania and St. Louis floods.

``I do it for the satisfaction of giving back to a community,'' Glorioso said. ``Everybody's always taking and it's nice to give back. You feel if you can help one person out there, when you're in need, somebody will help you.''

Peggy Brutsche, director of disaster services for the Los Angeles chapter of the Red Cross, said Glorioso is one of about two dozen Los Angeles-area volunteers who sign up to go anywhere they're needed in the United States, usually on short notice.

``He's very good and we're delighted to have someone with his capabilities,'' Brutsche said. ``The Red Cross needs to get help to people in disasters as soon as possible, and without communications capability, we'd have a lot slower service delivery to disaster victims.''

Aid provided so far by the Red Cross in the Midwest has topped $13 million, including the cost of opening 115 shelters and serving more than 880,000 meals for flood victims in Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia and Illinois; 2,600 Arkansas families displaced by tornadoes; and 895 Tennessee families affected by both floods and tornadoes, according to figures provided by the nonprofit organization.

While Glorioso is helping the Red Cross in flood areas, field crews run his company, U.S. Communications in Agoura Hills, which installs phone lines and makes wiring repairs.

``I have the luxury of spending a lot of time out on the road,'' said the bachelor. ``If I had a family, I don't think I would do it. Actually, the Red Cross is kind of like an extended family. You find yourself working with the same people on disasters hundreds of miles apart.''

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Photo: ``I do it for the satisfaction of giving back to a community,'' says Frank Glorioso of Agoura Hills, one of more than 6,200 volunteers who formed the frontline forces of the American Red Cross this spring, heading for flood-ravaged Northern California and the Midwest.