Secretary Margie Fisher turned on the television one morning while taking a break from staining her deck. A special about a dream home contest was airing on NBC, and a young spokesperson brought tears to Fisher’s eyes as he explained his situation. After hearing his praise for St. Jude Children’s Hospital, Fisher was moved to pick up the phone and make a donation.
In this fundraiser, St. Jude Hospital raffles off tickets for a “dream home.” Each ticket is $100, and the Kansas City home alone raised $900,000 for St. Jude. All the work and materials were donated by local contractors, allowing for 100 percent of the ticket proceeds go back to St. Jude.
As Fisher continued to watch the TV program, she had no idea that the donation she just made would make her the winner of this three-month-long contest.
“I was just ironing while watching this program,” Fisher said. “Then the next thing I knew, they pulled my name out. I about died. I just couldn’t believe they’d called my name.”
Fisher’s husband John was just as shocked as she was.
“I was returning home from an early morning golf game,” John said. “Margie reached me on my cell phone. I remember something like ‘you won’t believe what happened!’ She then told me about the giveaway and that she had won it. It took a little while for the reality of it to sink in. It was a very surreal experience.”
Fisher discovered soon after winning that she had made her donation in the last hour of the three-month contest. She believes that this occurrence was not only luck, but also an answered prayer.
“As a Catholic, we believe in praying to saints for their intercession,” Fisher said. “When things were really tough in my life, I’d pray to St. Jude, the patron saint of lost and impossible causes, and everything always worked out.”
St. Jude Hospital not only helped Fisher find a new dream home, but also helps save the lives of children every day. Many people don’t realize all the hospital does for its patients. Sophomore Jake Louis shared how St. Jude helped him and his family during his battle with cancer.
“I was diagnosed with Medullobastoma when I was 7 years old,” Louis said. “After surgery, my survival rate was about 50-55 percent, and the only hospital doing anything different was St. Jude in Memphis. They were getting an 80 percent survival rate.”
St. Jude also created a comforting environment for Louis and his family.
“It’s a kid-friendly place,” Louis said. “It doesn’t feel like a normal hospital. We never paid a cent for medical bills, St. Jude covered everything our insurance didn’t, no one gets turned away because they can’t pay.”
Donors like Fisher help offset the cost for patients like Louis so they can be treated without the concern of medical costs. In fact, the boy that inspired Fisher to donate, the one giving his testimony on the TV program, was Louis. Fisher didn’t realize until after the fact that Louis was a student at BV Southwest.
Although Fisher is not sure what her plans for the house are, she is excited about winning the dream home and the fact that St. Jude raised over $900,000.
“It is because it costs more than $1 million a day to run the hospital that fundraising is so important,” Louis said. “St. Jude saved my life and I feel the least I can do to give back is to let people know about my story.”