Once a week for four hours, Elizabeth Perron volunteers at Lifeline, taking calls from people who feel they are at the end of their tether. It is a role her late father warned she wouldn’t have time for, but she wasn’t swayed. “A lot of people are lonely," she shrugs, "and just have no one to talk to."

Callers to Lifeline would never suspect that the understanding woman on the other end of the phone is the daughter of the late Stan Perron, who featured on the Financial Review Rich List for more than a decade.