QUINCY — The raffle to help an ailing employee at Quincy Hardware and Lumber is booming.

“When I first was trying to brainstorm what we could do about this (Wednesday) morning, I thought, (maybe) we can raise $1,000 to help with travel expenses and them being out of town so long,” said owner Tina Stetner Thursday. “Well, the first couple of hours that the store was open (Thursday), I think we'd already made $1,250.”

Charles Rounds, who has worked at Quincy Hardware for about five years, was struck last week with cauda equina syndrome, a rare but critical condition in which some of the nerves at the base of the spine stop transmitting messages to the lower part of the body, according to the American Association of Neurosurgeons. In Rounds’ case, the nerves had stopped telling his bladder to empty, causing waste to back up and his kidneys to fail. He went to the emergency room at Quincy Valley Medical Center, which sent him on to Kadlec Regional Medical Center in the Tri-Cities, Reiman said.

“The neurosurgeons decided that the cauda equina syndrome wasn’t enough to warrant surgery yet, but they also need his kidneys to start functioning,” Reiman said Thursday. “So right now the main focus is to keep flushing his system and hope that his kidneys pick up the ball and run with it.”

Rounds’ numbers were improving slowly Thursday, but he was still in the hospital in a great deal of pain, Reiman said. He’ll be hospitalized for the foreseeable future, and that’s a problem for someone without health insurance.

“He makes too much to qualify for any of the state insurance plans, and they’ve told us that,” Reiman said. “So, I’ve filled out all his paperwork to try to get him a paid health plan, but none of those plans will backdate … and it could take 14 days before they approve him for an insurance plan. So, it looks like this trip is going to be all on us.”

Not if his community has anything to say about it. The store has put up raffle prizes including a Benchmade knife and a Milwaukee Packout tool storage system, and another business, Elegant Auto Washing, donated a $100 gift certificate to the raffle. There is also a bucket out at the store for donations, Stetner said. 

“We had a customer come in today and say, 'What’s going on with Charles?’” Stetner said. “He was headed out of town and came straight here and handed us a $100 bill to buy his raffle tickets.”

The raffle will run for at least two weeks, she said.

“I want to set my goal at $10,000,” she said. “If we did (more than) a thousand in the first couple of hours, let’s just go for ten.”

Rounds does mostly customer service at the store, Stetner said, along with whatever else needs doing.

“He has a vast knowledge of how to fix just about everything,” she said.

Besides being knowledgeable, Stetner said, Rounds is held in high esteem by both customers and coworkers.

“He’s one of those guys who would give you the shirt off his back,” she said. “Any stray animal that comes along and needs a home, he’s going to take care of it.”

“It’s very heartening to see how much the community loves him,” Reiman said, fighting back tears. “It’s just amazing to witness.”

Raffle tickets are $5 each or five for $20,and are available at Quincy Hardware and Lumber, 23 E St. SE, Quincy. More information is available at quincyhardware.com or by calling 509-787-0800.

    Prizes in Quincy Hardware and Lumber’s fundraising raffle include a Benchmade pocketknife and a Milwaukee Packout. A bucket is also out at the store for donations.