STEAMBOAT SPRINGS — Making her way through a checkout lane at City Market, longtime Ski Town USA resident Mary Marovich targets grocery bagger Sue White for a big hug. White is wearing the gold medal she won in giant slalom at the World Winter Special Olympics two weeks earlier in Austria.
“Sue,” Marovich exclaims, “I’m so happy for you! Congratulations!”
“Thank you!” White says in the loud voice with which she typically communicates.
White, a 47-year-old woman with intellectual disabilities, has worked at the store for 17 years. A lot of people love her in this close-knit community.
“Sue has overcome a lot – mentally, emotionally,” Marovich says. “Working in Steamboat, pushing grocery carts in the winter is a rough job. It can be very frustrating at times. For her to have the spotlight on her for winning a gold medal, thatap pretty amazing.”
Steamboat has produced more than 80 Olympians since 1932, and they all have flags hanging in Olympian Hall at historic Howelsen Hill, home of the 103-year-old Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club. Last week, White received her own flag to hang there. There is only one City Market in town, so White was well-known long before her trip to the famous Austrian ski town of Schladming, where she raced in two events.
“They know her as ‘Sue the bagger at City Market,’ ” says her boss, Steamboat native Nova Dorr. “She’s always smiling, very happy. When she’s on the front end (bagging), you’ll hear her go, ‘Hi!’ She’ll be in the parking lot and she’ll scream at people in the parking lot, ‘Hi!’ She’s a very, very friendly person. And she gives special customers a hug. We all get hugs here.”
White doesn’t drive, but she is very independent-minded. When she got off the bus her first day back to work after the Austria trip, about 20 co-workers were waiting for her with red, white and blue balloons.
“They were happy that I won first place,” White said. “They were surprised.”
Dorr says White’s co-workers are like family because she’s worked there for so long. Her parents live out of state and a brother lives in Florida. Co-workers put up a welcome home poster at the store for customers to sign which White took home.
“When Sue won her gold medal, we made announcements throughout the store,” Dorr said. “We cried, because we were so excited for her. For her to accomplish this was a highlight for our community. We were just so, so happy for her.”
Meghan McNamara worked at the store when she was in high school, bagging groceries alongside White. Now McNamara is White’s case manager at Horizons Specialized Services, which provides services to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. McNamara was so excited about White’s Austrian adventure, she paid her own way there just to watch White race, even though White didn’t need her supervision because Special Olympics handled that.
“I was like, ‘Man, I want to go, this is going to be amazing,’ ” McNamara said. “The more I learned about Special Olympics International, the more excited I got to be a part of it, because itap such a cool thing. I don’t feel special because I did this.”
While in Austria, the Special Olympians got to take a cable car ride 3,300 feet up to the Dachstein Glacier, which offers a spectacular panorama of the Alps. They got to tour a chocolate factory and visit a castle. The competitions involved 2,000 athletes from 103 countries in alpine and Nordic skiing, snowboarding, snowshoeing, hockey, figure skating and speed skating.
White says she feels “happy” when she races. She says the long flight to Europe — her first international trip — was “long” but “it wasn’t scary.”
Sporting red, white and gold fingernails she had painted to celebrate her medal, White takes a break at the store’s Starbucks area to talk about her trip and her co-workers.
“They love me, they care about me,” White says, voice booming. “I wanted to bring home the gold medal for these people to be proud of me.”
Barista Sarah Brumley overhears and shouts, “We ARE proud of you!”
Then White goes back to bagging groceries.
“She is just such a hard worker, and we are such a big part of her life,” Brumley says. “She is so outstanding and she makes all of us feel special. Itap important for us to make her know she did a good job and she is amazing.”
