Governor honors St. Luke's volunteers

June 12, 2009  
 
Iowa ranks in the top ten in the nation for its volunteerism rate. According to the latest "Volunteering in America" report, Iowa volunteers contribute an estimated 89.3 million hours of service per year.

St. Luke’s is fortunate to be on the receiving end of many of those volunteer hours. The hospital has 850 volunteers that worked 95,834 hours last year. This is the equivalent to 46 full time employees.

St. Luke’s Auxiliary and six volunteers have been selected as Governor’s Volunteer Award recipients. The Governor’s Volunteer Awards Presentation will take place on Friday, June 19, 2009 at Linn-Mar High School at 9:30 a.m.

 

St. Luke’s award recipients:

St. Luke’s Hospital Auxiliary

St. Luke’s Hospital Auxiliary created “Hope for the Holidays” initially in response to the 107 St. Luke’s employees who sustained damage in the June 2008 flood. The Auxiliary wanted to replace holiday items that these families lost in the flood. Auxiliary volunteers partnered with Rockwell Collins retirees and prepared 400 trees, 100 wreaths and an assortment of swags, greenery centerpieces and other holiday decorations. The Auxiliary’s holiday items were distributed to flood-affected individuals during a Salvation Army holiday event.

Betsy Schmuck

Schmuck has been an active bereavement volunteer with St. Luke’s Hospice for more than 15 years. In that time, she has made countless phone calls to bereaved families, lending a compassionate ear in their time of need. Last year, she started making bereavement calls to families with a cell phone from home on weekends and evenings. She believed she would reach more families by doing this.

Amber and Autumn Engstrom

Amber and Autumn Engstrom have been volunteers at St. Luke’s since September 2005. They started when they were freshman nursing students at Coe College. They perform a wide variety of jobs and logged in 587 hours and 25 minutes and 602 hours and 2 minutes respectively. The twins have been somewhat of the dynamic duo in Volunteer Services. This year they single-handedly took on the task of inventorying, labeling and organizing St. Luke’s quite extensive collection of games, puzzles, books and toys for Activity Carts located on many floors in the hospital.

Catherine Scott

Cathy Scott started volunteering at St. Luke’s on August 31, 2005. She came to St. Luke’s as a freshman nursing student at Coe College interested in getting hands on experience. Since then she has logged in 395 hours and 21 minutes. Scott has worked in Radiology, Pharmacy, Central Services, Work Well, the Emergency Department and several escort positions in the hospital. Because of Scott’s easy going temperament and ability to deal with what ever comes her way, she has been one of those volunteers who comes to mind first when you have a new volunteer job to pilot or need someone who you know will do the very best job possible and do it with exemplary customer service skills.

Doris Faas

Doris Faas is a dynamic team player with wonderful leadership qualities. Since 1998, Faas has volunteered over 2,100 hours at St. Luke’s Hospital in a variety of areas, but she is best known in Cedar Rapids as the force behind a program called Pediatric Orientation. First graders from Linn and surrounding counties come to St. Luke’s for tours that are designed not only to provide information to the students but to help allay their fears if they have to go to the hospital. The students see the Pediatric area and the Emergency Department, including the Lifeguard helicopter and have a nurse talk to them about the variety of things they may experience here as a patient. Faas recruits, orients, trains and schedules all of the volunteers in addition to leading tours herself. Faas has touched the lives of thousands of students by making the hospital a friendlier place.

Mary Achenbach

Mary Achenbach started volunteering at St. Luke’s Hospital in October of 1982 when she retired from her job and has accumulated 29,400 hours of service. She arrives five mornings a week before the Volunteer Office is open and goes about doing clerical work in six different areas. Achenbach travels to each department and keeps everything up to date and has plenty of supplies on hand.

The Governor’s Volunteer Award program was established in 1982 to honor and recognize volunteers for the commitment, service and time that they contribute to Iowa's government agencies and nonprofit organizations. The program is coordinated by the Iowa Commission on Volunteer Service and the Governor’s Office. For more information, visit www.volunteeriowa.org/awards.

MEDIA CONTACT: Sarah Corizzo, St. Luke’s Hospital, 319/369-8372 or 319/560-2385.