SUPERIOR – Employees at the Mineral Community Hospital are used to helping patients with their medical needs but recently they had the opportunity to help one of their own who will soon be evaluated for a liver transplant.

Connie Schoening, who works in the medical records department at MCH, will soon travel to Seattle to determine her status as a liver transplant candidate. Her friends and co-workers at MCH decided to help. Two of her friends in the medical records department, Angie Mellen and Verna Helm, decided to have a raffle to raise funds for Schoening’s trip.

With ticket prices for the raffle at just a dollar, MCH staff were able to raise over $1,800. Helm said, at MCH, they take care of their own.

“Connie is my co-worker and my friend,” Helm said. “She is going to Seattle to be evaluated for a liver transplant so we asked her if we could do a little fundraising for that trip. So we organized a raffle. We were hoping for a few hundred dollars. We made over $1,800. Our employees are incredibly generous.”

Mellen said, in her opinion, the generosity of the staff at MCH to come together and help one of their own comes from the family environment that exists at the facility. She said the staff at MCH, in addition to taking care of their patients, take care of their own.

“We are a family here,” Mellen said. “We take care of each other here. We love Connie. If she gets approved for the liver transplant, we will do some more fundraising for her.”

The items in the raffle included a handmade afghan, a custom made cake and a $50 gas card. Mellen said the size and value of the items wasn’t important to the staff at MCH. She said, the important thing, was helping out a member of the MCH family.

“Those were pretty small items to have generated $1,800,” Mellen said. “The cake is definitely worth it.”

Helm said a committee including other MCH employees, Monte Turner and Mike Stager, were responsible for the fundraising effort in addition to Mellen and herself. She said the success of the fundraising venture has encouraged them to continue the effort in the future.

“I think we are going to see this get even bigger,” Helm said.