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Sweet Thank You
For Frontline Heroes
A cupcake is a small thing.
One thousand cupcakes is quite another.
Stephanie Nelson had the very big idea of honoring frontline heroes at Ventura County Medical Center with gourmet cupcakes. She selected National Nurses Day on May 6 for the confectionary celebration.
Because National Doctors Day passed two months earlier without any festivities due to the urgency of COVID-19 preparations, docs were also mixed into the new cupcake batter. In fact, because every worker in the medical profession is indispensible, it was decided that each and every member of the VCMC staff would be thanked with a fancy cupcake.
This was no small undertaking for Nelson, Director of Volunteer Services at the hospital, and her helpers. To deliver successfully required the harmony of an ICU team during a Code Blue situation. Call this a Code Red Velvet.
The baking angels were called upon at “Heavenly Cakes & More” in Oxnard to create a variety of gorgeous offerings in chocolate, vanilla, lemon and, of course, red velvet. The frosted artworks featured swirls, sprinkles and powdered dustings.
On the morning of Nurses Day, Nelson and two fellow cupcake crusaders – Mary McCarthy, a member of the VCMC Auxiliary; and Patient Advocate Marie Castaneda – picked up the baked bounty.
In a bakery’s version of Tetris, they puzzle-pieced 84 pink and white cardboard boxes, each holding a dozen delicacies, into their three cars and rushed them – “Stat!” – to VCMC.
“It took quite a while to load the cars and then unload them,” McCarthy shared in apparent understatement, for the boxes naturally had to be handled and stacked with care.
After the cupcakes were set out in various break rooms throughout the hospital, Nelson sent out word about the goodies to department managers. During brief reprieves from caring for patients, their work seemingly more nonstop than ever during this coronavirus era, staff members snuck away to savor a little taste of Heavenly.
Despite a sweet discount by Heavenly Cakes and a kind Samaritan stepping forward to pick up the tab for 100 of the cupcakes, dough was still needed to pay the balance. In stepped the Auxiliary with funds it raises from sales in the hospital gift shop.
The Auxiliary itself is a collection of hero volunteers. It routinely buys toys, books and games for young patients in the Pediatric and NICU wards and also stages holiday parties for the kids.
“It’s tough for them to be there, especially at holiday times,” McCarthy says of the hospitalized children. She further notes that because of COVID-19, the volunteers currently cannot visit the kids but instead must drop gifts off at the nursing stations.
As grand as the cupcake party was, here is something even more beautiful than a red velvet with a swirl of white frosting: for each of the 1,000 smiles delivered to VCMC there surely has been a similar deed of coronavirus-related kindness in Ventura County these past few stay-and-shelter months.
The cupcakes, however, seem a perfect metaphor for these times – and for a hospital. Unlike a giant-sized fancy cake where the cut slices touch one another, cupcakes are individually wrapped in paper liners – like tiny Personal Protective Equipment. Boxed together, or arranged on a table, they are the equal of any whole cake.
“I know it’s a small gesture,” McCarthy shares, “but I am so grateful to all those on the frontlines. The hospital is under enormous pressure. Hopefully the cupcakes provided a bit of cheer. Never underestimate cupcake power.”
Asked if all 1,000 cupcakes made it to the staff lips, Mary offered a confession: “I had a red velvet one – heaven!”
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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.
Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …
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