Hospital Honors Volunteer with Humankindness Award

Dignity Health – St. Mary Medical Center recently honored Tim Smith, a teacher with the Los Angeles County Office of Education, for 15 years of dedicated service to the hospital. St. Mary Vice President of Mission Integration, Sister Celeste Trahan, CCVI, presented Smith with the hospital’s Humankindness Award for volunteering, along with his students, at the St. Mary CARE Center Food Pantry.

Smith has spent most of his teaching career of 34 years educating students on basic life skills to be more independent in the future, from self-care skills like shaving, to counting money and paying for purchases, to riding the bus and shopping at the supermarket. All of Tim’s students, ages 18-22, have some degree of intellectual disability; in addition, some also have autism, orthopedic impairments, and/or hearing or visual disabilities. “Like everyone, their personalities are unique, yet collectively they are some of the greatest souls on the planet,” said Smith.

Twice a month, the CARE Center, an HIV/AIDS treatment, education, resource, and prevention program at St. Mary, hosts a Food Pantry for its clients. One aspect of living a full life for this population is healthy eating habits and valuable nutrition. For the past 15 years, Smith has brought hundreds of students together to count, sort, and bag healthy food for Long Beach’s HIV/AIDS community served by the CARE Center.

Smith has taught these young adults about the significance of helping others and the importance of being contributing members of the community by donating time to the CARE Food Pantry. Smith shared, “The community has learned to see how capable and productive the students can be as a result of their volunteer work in this situation. Not only have my students had an opportunity to help others in volunteering at St. Mary, but they have had the opportunity to further develop a work ethic and work skills which will hopefully transfer into paid employment in the future.”

Sister Celeste and hospital leadership expressed their gratitude for Smith and his students. She shared that the founding Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word started this community work with the HIV/AIDS population suffering in Long Beach 31 years ago. “CARE continues its important service work today helping 1,700 clients because of the generosity and dedication of people like Tim and his students,” stated Sister Celeste.

Story/photo courtesy St. Mary Medical Center