The staff and volunteers at Ronald McDonald House in Denver have become like family to 19-year-old Sara Johnson.
“This is home,” she said, casting her eyes across the clean, comfortable dining room, where a half-dozen members of her real family also gathered on a weekday afternoon.
Her first child, Wyatt, was born nine weeks early and needs eight weeks of medical care at Presbyterian/St. Luke’s Medical Center, a few blocks away.
When her baby was hospitalized, Johnson faced a difficult choice: Leave her child behind or make the 4 1/2-hour round trip to Denver from her home near Brush.
Money’s tight.
She and her husband, Justin, 20, are looking for work.
“I don’t know what we would have done,” she said, thankful for the roof over their heads and the encouraging words provided at the home that hamburgers built.
Well, not entirely. While the house’s executive director, Pam Whit aker, heaps credit on the nine McDonald’s restaurant operators who opened the Denver facility 30 years ago, it’s the donors and volunteers who help make the place a home.
The $1.8 million they raise annually, helped by the change people donate at the restaurants, keeps the lights on for the weary families of sick or injured children at the Denver house, as well as one in Aurora.
The Ronald McDonald House Charities of Denver also provides college scholarships, supports community organizations and operates the week-long Sky High Hope Camp in Bellvue, west of Fort Collins, each summer for children with cancer and their siblings from across the country.
“Every year is a question mark,” Whitaker said of her budget. “The economy has been a big factor. Two of our big donors lost money in the (Bernard) Madoff scandal.
“A lot of people are still donating, but it’s half or a third of what they used to give.”
In spite of the economy, volunteers have remained abundant and rich in spirit, Whitaker said.
The house asks for $15 a night, which includes everything a family would need, but no one is ever turned away because of money, she said.
Strangers help strangers because they sympathize with hard times, Whitaker said.
“It can happen to anybody,” she said. “One week you’re living your life and everything is fine, and the next week your child is sick and needs a heart transplant.”
Joey Bunch: 303-954-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com
