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Wednesday, January 02, 2002

By Bob Batz Jr., Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Josephine Guy does so much for those in need, heaven help anyone she thinks can help her with that mission.

"I prey on their souls," she says with a giggle about those she asks for money, time and other assistance for her volunteer pet project:

The Community Health Clinic.

It's a barely noticeable storefront in downtown New Kensington, Westmoreland County. It's not even open until just before 6 p.m., when, as on a recent typical night, Guy arrives from her paying job as an auto parts factory purchasing agent.

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The clinic is her labor of love.

She is board vice president, fund-raising chairperson, clinic manager and medical assistant for this tiny nonprofit, which provides medical care to anyone who comes in, from as far away as Pittsburgh. Unlike most clinics, patients don't have to pay on the way out, or ever, since this one serves those without insurance or sufficient means.

Guy, 47, is there on the three weeknights the clinic is open and frequently on Saturday mornings. Now that she sees a burned-out bulb in the new education room, she knows she'll come in to be "maintenance person on Sunday."

As her colleague Dr. Richard Wilson puts it, "What doesn't she do?"

Her total dedication to the clinic, where she's volunteered since 1974, is why she was chosen as one of 50 Community Champions in Western Pennsylvania. The local volunteer recognition program -- sponsored by the Post-Gazette, AT&T Broadband and Eat'n Park, with help from the United Way -- is part of a national one, the Jefferson Awards. Guy is one of six local Community Champions to win a Jefferson Award, considered volunteering's Nobel Prize. On Jan. 24 at 7 p.m., they will be honored at Carnegie Music Hall, where they'll each get a medallion and $1,000 to give to the nonprofit group of their choice.

Kendall Lincoln Jr., 3, is weighed by Josephine Guy at the Community Health Clinic in New Kensington, where she has been a volunteer since 1974. (Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette)

What's Guy doing with hers? She admits that getting cash for the clinic is the only reason she agreed to let her sister, Dormont's Francie Pattinato, nominate her. Otherwise, Guy would rather not endure being personally spotlighted.

But raising money is one of her biggest chores, especially since 1998 when the clinic lost funding from the Westmoreland County United Way -- more than half of its then $18,000 budget.

That could have killed the clinic, but Guy wouldn't let that happen. She went into fund-raising overdrive, preying on souls at foundations and clubs, newspapers and TV stations.

When the opportunity arose to make a pitch to the local Rotary Club, Guy jumped on it, even though she'd just had major surgery and couldn't drive. Salvation Army Maj. Stan Senak, a Rotarian, remembers how impressed he was, but not with her speaking skill or personality. "It was just seeing her passion for that organization. Her heart, you just knew, is with the clinic."

The clinic's health can be charted in the upswing of clients, from 633 in 1998 to 1,445 in 1999 to 2,811 last year. This year, they'll be way over 3,000, she says, all on a budget of about $52,000 that she cobbles together from various sources.

Guy is all about doing a lot with little. The only paid staff member is the evening front-desk coordinator; a rotating stable of doctors each gets a modest stipend. Everybody else -- nurses, a social workers -- volunteer.

Most of the drugs the clinic dispenses are samples drug companies donate. Guy enrolls patients in indigent programs that she found out most drug companies offer. Otherwise, many clients would have to go without, since most earn less than $10,000 a year.

"We take the patients nobody else wants," she says, getting referrals from other doctors, as well as schools and social service agencies.

"I don't know how she does it," says Dr. Patricia Fisher, the chief resident at Forbes Regional Hospital in Monroeville, who works at the clinic one night a week and coordinates other Forbes residents' participation.

"Josephine was my support," says Nancy Uhric, 54, of Brackenridge, who started going to the clinic about a year ago. She had high blood pressure, but, since her husband lost a job, no insurance. Guy and the clinic helped her, including getting her temporary health insurance through the state that covered kidney surgery last month.

Uhric calls Guy and company lifesavers, and not just for doing things like taking medicine to her when she couldn't get to the clinic. "I have that feeling that without them, I might not even be here today."

The clinic itself is nothing fancy. The two examination rooms have a Norman Rockwell look, in part, because the tables and other furnishings were donated by the doctor who founded it as the New Kensington Free Clinic in 1971.

Guy, who was one of six children in an Italian family in nearby Arnold, started volunteering there a few years later as a receptionist. She'd dreamed of being a doctor, but then women were supposed to be nurses or teachers. Besides, medical school was too expensive.

She did get training as a medical assistant, and worked for a time with the Visiting Nurse Association. But the pressures of being a single parent pushed her into training and working as a purchasing agent.

She brings those skills, too, to her clinic outreach: Over the holidays, she distributed a tractor-trailer load of surplus cleaning supplies and other goodies to area senior citizens. This year, she hopes to grow the clinic by adding specialists, and recruiting more volunteers.

What Guy enjoys most is the hands-on work, which on this recent night ranges from taking a man's blood pressure to giving a 3-year-old lollipops to suggesting a shelter and counseling for a woman whose husband pushed her. The last patient didn't leave until 9 p.m., and still Guy's work wasn't done:

She went to drop off a fund-raising proposal to the Alcoa Foundation.

She admits to being a workaholic, a perfectionist, and sometimes a pain. "I'm stubborn," she says.

"I find ways."

William Green & Associates will donate $1,000 to the Community Health Clinic on behalf of Josephine Guy.