KV Healthcare

KVH Stories

Andy and Karen Schock

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Devan and John Bartlett

Growing up, Andy and Karen Schock’s musical tastes were as different as they were.

He played the guitar, loved hard rock, and played in a band at Yakima’s Eisenhower High. Raised in New Jersey, she played the piano, sang in school choirs and in musicals in high school, and favored folk music and groups like the Byrds.

Those differences aside, they were destined – literally and figuratively – to make music together.

Flash back to 1979. A vocalist scheduled to perform with Andy at his brother’s wedding backed out at the last minute. Friends suggested Karen, who had come to Yakima as a VISTA volunteer after college, as a replacement. “There was a spark,” Andy says.

They married in 1982, exchanging vows at the same South Carolina church where her parents had wed. They didn’t know then that their road together would lead to Ellensburg.

Prior to meeting Karen, Andy had worked a summer job at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle after two years at Washington State University. The center was a small operation back then, so small that even a ward clerk rubbed elbows with leading cancer researchers. “It was the tipping point that changed what I wanted to do,” Andy says.

After their marriage, they settled in Yakima. She landed a job with the Department of Social and Health Services. He worked as an LPN while going to school to become a Registered Nurse. When he finished there were no openings at Fred Hutchinson so he became an operating room nurse at Yakima Memorial Hospital, moving to KVH Hospital as operating room nurse manager in 1987.

But the role took Andy away from his passion – day-to-day contact with patients. He went back to school to become a physician assistant and worked as a PA in the Upper County and with a clinic in Yakima before joining KVH Internal Medicine in 2007.

By then, Karen already was a KVH institution. When the couple’s sons, Henri and Ben, were born she’d stepped away from her career. In 1990, with the boys in school, she took a half-time position as director of volunteer services at KVH Hospital. “I started with three or four volunteers,” she says. “They say the number of volunteers you have should match the number of patient beds. At that time, it was 50-bed hospital.”

The number of volunteers grew. So did Karen’s skill set and responsibilities. She did some marketing and spent eighteen years in social services and discharge planning. Today, she runs the KVH Cancer Outreach program and manages the pre-med and pharmacy students who rotate through KVH Hospital plus the 65 in-service volunteers who volunteer weekly.

Neither she or Andy plan to leave KVH any time soon. “It’s the environment we’re in, the people we work with, that makes it so rewarding,” Andy says. “I’ve been with these employees and volunteers 25 years. They take care of others with such pride,” Karen adds. “It’s inspiring.”

The making of two M.A.s

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“I’d been working at Starbucks for 8 years and 3 months, and it was about 8 years and 3 months too long.”

No disrespect intended to the international coffee giant. Life just had other plans for Alisha Liedtke.

After a stint selling bamboo sheets for Costco across the continental U.S., Liedtke found herself wanting something that kept her closer to home, and to husband Drew, who at the time was getting his Master of Fine Arts from CWU.

“We’d lived in Ellensburg for three years,” Liedtke recalls, “but I’d never been part of the town.”

She was ready for a change.

Photo: Flores and Liedtke take a moment to confer in a clinic exam room.

Liedtke found a local job opening for a scribe in a clinical environment at Kittitas Valley Healthcare. She applied, and was chosen out of more than forty applicants for the position. “I thought it was an established program,” she laughs. “Turns out I was the first one.”

Soon, Liedtke found herself working alongside teammates José Diaz, April Grant, Laurie Rost, and Carrie Barr, laying the groundwork for the program now in place at KVH, where scribes serve in exam rooms alongside patients and providers, handling the computer charting during the visit.

Rightfully proud of what the team accomplished, Liedtke sees the scribe’s role as “helping the provider to focus on patients.” Now, much of the documentation work that added hours to a provider’s already long day rests in the capable hands of scribes.

Six months before Liedtke began her journey at KVH Family Medicine – Ellensburg, Flores became the newest dietary aide in Food and Nutrition Services at KVH Hospital. Unlike Liedtke, the healthcare setting was familiar to Flores. The daughter of an RN, “I’ve always worked in the medical field,” she explains. “I got my CNA (Certified Nurse Assistant) when I was 16.”

She put that degree to good use for the next 16 years, working as a residential trainer for people with disabilities, then at a nursing home.

About a year into her time in the KVH kitchen, Flores underwent surgery. While convalescing, she received a call from Chief Clinic Officer Carrie Barr, asking Flores if she’d be interested in becoming a medical assistant (MA).

It was a tough decision for Flores to make.

“I’ve always wanted to work in a doctor’s office,” she admits, “but I was thinking about my family in the hospital kitchen. I loved working with everyone there. It was comfortable, and I didn’t want to leave them hanging.”

Around the same time, Liedtke got a call of her own. She was summoned to the manager’s office for a private meeting. “I was terrified! What did I do?” she’d wondered. She then learned that KVH was about to launch another program in the clinics, this time an apprenticeship for medical assistants.

They asked me, “Are you interested?”

That one question led to some sleepless nights for Liedtke, who would be facing yet another major transition. Being an MA “is a whole different ballgame,” she says. “And I’d also be leaving a job that really nurtured me into becoming the person I was supposed to be.”

Despite their initial hesitancy, both women ultimately made the courageous decision to move forward into the exciting world of medical assistants.

Things took off quickly once the apprenticeship began. After a one-day orientation, they shadowed with their coaches (certified MAs), who roomed patients, gave immunizations and EKGs, and did documentation and data entry. “By Day 3, we felt comfortable,” recalls Liedtke. “The coaches were still there, but we were ‘driving.’”

Now that the one-year apprenticeship is drawing to a close, Flores and Liedtke both agree they made the right decision.

“I can’t believe how much I love it,” beams Liedtke. “I’m doing things now that in the past I’d only hoped for. I’m living this life I never could have imagined for myself. I get to wake up and put on PJs (scrubs) and go to work and help patients all day. It’s like the greatest job in the world!”

Flores agrees. “It’s never boring.” As a mother of two, Flores is a hit with the clinic’s pediatric patients. Other than her son Colton and daughter Dakotah, “I’ve never worked with children before,” says Flores. She quickly got past that barrier, finding ways to encourage youngsters who often aren’t thrilled about being at the clinic. “No matter how they do, with their parents’ permission, I give them a popsicle and tell them ‘Thanks for being a good kid. You’re a super hero!’”

The two women’s families are also thrilled, with both mothers aspiring even more for their girls. “My mom thinks I should become an RN,” says Flores, who loves her work as an MA and is content to continue in that role. Young Dakotah feels the same way: “‘It’s more of a mom job you’re doing now,’” she recently told Flores. “’I can say I’m proud of you.’” That, along with the clinic’s family-friendly schedule, is as much of a reward as Flores could ever want.

In the same selfless way that they care for their patients, Flores and Liedtke encourage others to join them in considering an apprenticeship. “If you love the idea of patient care, it’s absolutely the way to go,” says Liedtke. And while program graduates agree to stay with KVH for at least one year, both women find the idea of working elsewhere amusing.

Says Liedtke, “I’m never leaving this place.” Flores nods and smiles gently, “I’d say we’re spoiled.”

Surely, these remarkable ladies’ shared passion for patient care somehow makes us all a little better.

Wendy Hinckle

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Wendy Hinckle

She’s got a spring in her step and a gleam in her eye. While that’s nearly always been true of Wendy Hinckle, there’s now an unmistakable air of gratitude behind her smile.

It’s the kind of expression that tells a story all on its own.

“I feel so lucky,” beams the retired elementary school teacher.

“I’ve had mammograms regularly since I was probably 40.” As the years passed, Hinckle’s friends began their private battles with breast cancer. “Statistically, I became a bit fearful of what the results of my own tests might be.”

Last year, at age 68, she received the news she’d been dreading.

“I got a call from KVH that something was spotted and they needed an ultrasound,” recalls Hinckle. “So I had my ultrasound the day before I went to Arizona for the winter.”

In November 2017, a little over a year after The Foundation at KVH began its focused campaign to bring digital mammography to Kittitas County, KVH Hospital went online with the service.

In January, Hinckle underwent a biopsy in Tucson. On February 6, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. “Grade 1, stage 1, level 1. Thank God.” The cancer had been caught in its early stages.

What she learned next was shocking.

According to the radiation oncologist, “I’d probably had the cancer for 5-8 years,” said Hinckle. What she heard from other Arizona providers supported that claim. “One doctor said it wouldn’t have been picked up on a traditional mammography unit because it was so small,” she remembers. “Another said because of where it was located, it might not have been picked up earlier.”

Two weeks after the diagnosis, Hinckle had a lumpectomy, followed by 20 days of radiation. Upon returning to Ellensburg, her oncology care resumed at Yakima’s North Star Lodge, with checkups every three months, and a mammogram just before the one-year mark.

“I’m not a super dynamo, I don’t have a huge amount of energy. I just have to manage my time,” says Hinckle, who stays active as a rule and even found a way to keep busy during her cancer treatments, focusing on training her shih tzu, Yumi, for novice and intermediate tricks certification. “The day after I was diagnosed, I went to the tricks class and we started training. It was great because it kept my mind off of what I was going through.”

Today, Hinckle stays active in the local SAIL program, and enjoys tai chi. “I also love to play games,” she admits, meeting each week for pinochle with a group that includes other retired teachers. And while she and her husband Kirk flee to warmer climes each winter, Hinckle maintains her deep roots in Kittitas County, where she’s served as a Gallery One board member for nearly two decades. A lifelong lover of the arts, her pride in the gallery’s current direction is evident: “We’re really getting involved with schools now and reaching out to the community.”

That’s the passion of a teacher with plans to give and grow, for many years to come. It’s also why she’s happy to share her cancer story – so that others can learn. “I strongly encourage women to get mammograms,” she says, recalling a friend who recently had her first mammogram after learning of Hinckle’s experience.

“I really want to express my gratitude to KVH – the hospital and the foundation – for raising the money for digital mammography,” says Hinckle. “For seeing that Ellensburg needed to catch up with the technology that’s out there, because it’s possible if I would have had another traditional scan, it would have been missed again.”

Related: Life after 50: the happy years (interview with local SAIL program director Carol Findley)

Jim Repsher, PA-C

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Jim Repsher, PA-C

His father was a pulmonologist; his mother a nurse. But growing up in a small town in Colorado, Jim Repsher, a certificated physician assistant at KVH Orthopedics, never planned a career in healthcare.

He was in love with outdoor adventure.  Ski racing and river rafting consumed him. By 18, he was a professional river rafting guide.

But his high school years were undistinguished academically. “I graduated by the skin on my teeth,” says Repsher, who went on to earn a degree in history at the University of Wyoming where his academic career was equally undistinguished.

After college, he considered a job as a river guide in South Africa but passed on the opportunity. “The ski areas were hiring ski patrollers so rather than go to South Africa I joined the ski patrol. So I was river guiding in the summer, skiing all winter – and starving in between,” Repsher says.

In retrospect, his first job as a river guide started him on a path to a medical career. “I found out you got a bonus if you took EMT (emergency medical technician) training. So I became an EMT,” he says.

Work with the ski patrol led to volunteering year-round with the ambulance service. In 1993, the county paid for him to become a paramedic.

In the years that followed Repsher was accepted into the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), taught white water rafting and canoeing during the summer and did ski patrol in the winter, then did a two-year stint teaching in a outdoor paramedic training program before moving on to work for an air ambulance service.

By then, he was a man with responsibilities.

He’d met his wife, a fellow ski patrol member, in 1990. Married in 1998, they have two children.

Repsher and his family eventually moved to Ashland, Ore., where he worked for an air ambulance service. Then came his decision to try to become a physician assistant.

“I figured there was no way I was going to get in a program because my grades were so atrocious,” he says. Despite his reservations, in 2004 he applied to the program offered through the University of Washington Medical School and was accepted. “It was based on my life experience,” he says.

While he’d been accepted into the program, he hadn’t been accepted into the university because of his grades. “So they (program officials) had to get a special rider in order for me to get in,” says Repsher, who moved his family to Ellensburg and enrolled at the UW’s campus in Yakima.

He grins at what happened next: “I made them proud. I made the Presidents List every semester.” His grade point average: 4.0.

In Yakima he met Dena Mahre, now also a physician assistant at KVH Orthopedics. She recruited him to his first job in Yakima and then to a second one in Yakima. Along the way he also met Dr. Gary Bos, a highly regarded orthopedic surgeon. When Bos came to KVH Orthopedics in 2012, Repsher came with him. Mahre joined them a short time later.

Repsher, who has worked in emergency departments in addition to his work at KVH Orthopedics, still relishes outdoor adventure and skis, rafts and rides his mountain bike “all over the place.”

Working in orthopedics is “a great job” with moments of absolute joy, he says.

“We had a lady,” he offers by way of example. “She was 88. She had a horrible hip, horrible pain. She’d been living with it for years.”

He recalls the day she first came into the clinic, minutes passing like hours as she slowly made her way down the sidewalk.

The woman had a hip replacement.

“Two weeks later she comes walking down the sidewalk in no pain, carrying the walker and wanting to know if she still needed it,” he says beaming. “The thing about this job is, people get better. With my dad, people died.”

Stephanie Brown

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Stephanie Brown

She’s an active retiree who loves to travel, spend time with family, go RV camping and spend a month each year at Mariners spring training in Arizona. But when Stephanie Brown’s left knee kept going out and pain threatened to disrupt her step and her lifestyle, she knew she had to do something.

Brown, a Yakima resident, turned to Dr. Gary Bos of KVH Orthopedics in Ellensburg.

Bos may not have an organized fan club like the Mariners do, but if he did the 69-year-old Brown just might be at the helm. In 2015, Bos replaced her left knee. Duly impressed, two years later she had him do the other one.

That Brown turned to Bos was hardly accidental. After all, when her husband Ron needed knee replacement surgery in 2012, their oldest daughter – then a surgical tech in Yakima – insisted he have Bos do it. “She knew Dr. Bos. She’d watched him do surgery and she knew his reputation,” Brown says.

The rest is history.

With Ron readily sharing his experience, word spread. Ron’s best friend soon followed suit and had a knee replacement. Then came the best friend’s wife, who also happens to be Stephanie Brown’s best friend. Stephanie’s first surgery followed a week or so later.

“Another friend who’d had surgery done by someone else came up to see Dr. Bos and had some repairs done,” Brown says. “I have another girl friend who had her knee done six or eight weeks ago.”

But Brown is nothing but serious when she talks about Bos and her experience at KVH. Besides his professionalism, Bos was warm, personable and a good communicator who not only listened to her concerns – but heard them. “One of the nice things was that he did a local anesthesia so I didn’t have to recover from general anesthesia,” she says. “That was one of my big fears.”

And it isn’t just Bos who makes the KVH experience memorable, she says. It’s the atmosphere of warmth and caring she says permeates the KVH environment. “I don’t know who is responsible,” she says. “My husband raved about it when he had his surgery done. You see it everywhere in the hospital. The girls at the front desk are very friendly and helpful as are all the other people you meet in pre-op, radiology, everywhere. I absolutely cannot complain about anyone. Everyone takes great care of you.”

They also go above and beyond when they see a need, she says. Case in point: When her best friend’s husband began to feel badly while waiting for his wife during a pre-op appointment in Bos’s office. “He was not feeling good, not looking good,” Brown says. “One of Dr. Bos’s receptionists saw that and said, ‘I’m taking him over to the hospital’ and put him in a wheelchair and took him over to the Emergency Department,” Brown says. “They immediately got him in. Because it was a heart problem he was transferred to a hospital in Yakima.”

On the day the man’s wife had her knee surgery, he stopped by Bos’s office to personally deliver a bouquet of flowers and an appreciative “thank you” to the staff member who helped him. “He says she saved his life,” Brown says.

“If I could come here for everything I needed to go to a hospital for I would be here in a flash,” she adds with a smile. “ It’s that good.”

Dena Mahre, PA-C

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Dena Mahre, PA-C

She loves sports and outdoor recreation, laughingly admits to “living life vicariously” through her grandchildren and beams when she talks about the photo she captured of young male elephants, their ears flared intimidatingly as they advanced toward her during a photo safari in Africa.

At 50, Dena Mahre, an orthopedic physician assistant at KVH Orthopedics, is living a life she loves – and intent on helping others do the same. “I like helping people get back to the activities they love to do – whether it’s knitting or running marathons,” Mahre says.  “I like the challenge of dealing with people who have been told, ‘You’re going to have to learn to live with that.’

“I like giving them hope. I like helping them get back the lives they had. We may not always be able to make them perfect but we can make them better.”

That Mahre herself thrives on an active lifestyle is no accident.

Raised in a tiny town outside of Denver that didn’t have a traffic light or fast food restaurant until she was in high school, she grew up active and athletic. “I played soccer, softball, a little basketball,” she says. “My family hiked and took weeklong backpacking trips. I was the only one who skied so I hitched rides with friends.”

Fast forward a few years. Mahre graduated from the University of Montana with a degree in athletic training, worked as athletic trainer at Yakima’s Eisenhower High School for several years then enrolled in the University of Washington’s physician assistant training program.

After working at orthopedic clinics in Yakima, Mahre joined KVH Orthopedics in 2015. Dr. Gary Bos, an orthopedic surgeon she previously worked with in Yakima, was already here. “It was a perfect fit. I liked the people and the small town feel. I liked what was happening here,” says Mahre who assists Dr. Thomas Mirich in surgery in addition to her office practice.

Away from her career, Mahre – still active and athletic – says she’s a much better skier than she was in the past. Credit a chance encounter in a crowded waiting area at SeaTac Airport in December 2002.

Headed back from Colorado after spending Christmas with her family, she was waiting for a connecting flight to Yakima. So were two of the Yakima area’s most famous athletes – the Mahre twins, Phil and Steve – who finished first and second respectively in the men’s slalom at the 1984 Winter Olympics.

When a seat opened up next to Steve she sat down and they began talking sports, a companionable conversation that continued on their “puddle jumper” flight back home.

It might have ended there.

She’d given him only her first name, not her last. But he recognized the friend who picked her up at the airport and called to get her number. The rest is history.

“We went out on New Year’s Eve. We’ve been together ever since,” Dena Mahre says. Steve’s proposal came one night when he handed her a poem as he cleared dishes after dinner. Suffice it to say, he changed her skiing as well as her life.

“I was self-taught. He took me all apart and put me back together,” says Mahre, who relishes her own role of putting people “back together” in a different way.

Examples? There are plenty. “There was a young gal, maybe 26, who had hip pain for a year and a half. She’d injured herself hiking and hadn’t hiked since,” Mahre says. “She’d been to three or four places looking for an answer.”

Mahre diagnosed the problem as sports injury joint dysfunction and “working in conjunction with some good physical therapists she was able to get back in six to eight weeks doing everything she wanted to,” Mahre says, smiling. “I love seeing people doing what they love doing.”

Want to know more? See Dena’s medical education and clinic information here.

Thomas Mirich, MD

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Thomas Mirich, MD

He’s an accomplished orthopedic surgeon with decades of experience in changing lives for the better.

Ask Dr. Tom Mirich of KVH Orthopedics why he became a doctor and he answers with a wry laugh. “I was doomed from the start,” he insists, flashing a wide grin. “My dad was a doctor. My mom was a nurse.”

His father, an orthopedic surgeon in private practice, also worked in a free-standing emergency clinic in West Hollywood back in the 1960s. Patients from all walks of life walked through the door – including celebrities like Lucille Ball.

Mirich was ten when he started “camping out” with his father during some of those long shifts. “To keep from getting bored I helped out where I could, developing x-rays, bringing him stuff, holding patients’ hands,” says Mirich who also spent time at his father’s orthopedic office.

Mirich’s dad, a federally licensed gunsmith, had worked his way through medical school using that skill. “So I grew up not only in the ER and in the orthopedic office but also working in the machine shop,” Mirich says. “I grew up knowing the tools I would use as an orthopedic surgeon.”

He was hooked. “So off to medical school I went,” he says. “I loved surgery. When I landed in orthopedics I was like a pig in mud – done deal. Orthopedic surgeons have more tools than anyone on the planet.”

Mirich went on to a five-year orthopedic surgery residency at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, then moved on to private practice in Riverside, California.

Twenty years later the acres of orange groves that had dominated the area when he and his wife Susan, a Registered Nurse, arrived had been decimated by developers and swallowed up in the housing boom. The 5.4 mile commute from home to office took 45 minutes to an hour and a half.
Determined to move, Mirch was looking at multiple offers in the Midwest when Susan got a “cold call” from Glasgow, a remote town in northeastern Montana.

Just 60 miles from the Canadian border, Glasgow was polar opposite to Riverside. A trip to Costco took four and a half hours. The town had just 3,000 people – and an aching need for an orthopedic surgeon.

“Northeastern Montana had nobody,” he says. “So being the altruistic people that Susan and I are we went to Montana to fill a desperate need. I was the only orthopedic surgeon for nine or eleven counties, the entire northeast corner of Montana.”

Eight years later, he and Susan were ready for change. Their daughters – Mirich laughingly calls them “princesses” – were grown and doing post graduate work, one pursuing a PhD in chemistry in Connecticut, the other an MBA in Arizona. With their family spread, the Miriches wanted easier access to travel and other amenities.

Mirich was researching opportunities when he ran across an opening at KVH. A young physician in Glasgow who had grown up in the Tri Cities assured him he “would love” Ellensburg. A look at the KVH Orthopedics website revealed a familiar name: Dr. Gary Bos who had trained with Mirich at the Mayo Clinic.

The rest is history. Bos arranged a visit. The couple flew in and “fell in love with Ellensburg.” The young physician in Glasgow and  Bos “were the ones who sold me on Ellensburg,” Mirich says.

Two plus years later and now 63, Mirich’s passion for orthopedic surgery endures.

“Improving a life – oh yeah. We actually improve people’s lives and most of the time the improvement in pain and function is visible,” says Mirich whose appreciative patients not only voice gratitude but sometimes invite him to weddings or send birth announcements.

“I hear, ‘Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!’ I can’t go anywhere without meeting someone I’ve helped,” he says. “That’s the personal reward. That’s what drives orthopedic surgeons to continue learning the latest and greatest techniques.”

Want to know more? See Dr. Mirich’s medical education and clinic information here.

Connie Dunnington

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Connie Dunnington

When her husband Bob died in a motorcycle accident sixteen years ago, Connie Dunnington understood that life as she knew it had changed.

The couple, married 13 years, were parents of two daughters, then 12 and 10.

Connie knew she needed to redefine her family’s life, creating some new traditions while preserving others. So she resumed an old love – horseback riding, sold the building that had housed Bob’s orthodontic practice and built an arena, and introduced her children to the Stirrups and Irons 4-H group, the same club she’d belonged to as a child. She went on to become the club leader, a position she still holds.

She also embraced one of Bob’s traditions – and made it her own. A dedicated community volunteer, he’d signed on early as a member of the board of The Foundation at KVH, a non-profit that works to improve community health care.

Two years after Bob’s death, Connie got a call. Bob’s seat on the board was still vacant, the caller said. Would she be interested in filling it? The answer was yes.

It was a way of continuing his legacy and adding to her own. The board was trying to raise $1 million for an endowment fund but some were questioning whether the effort should continue. She knew Bob had been determined to reach the goal.

“Being on the board maintained some continuation, some kind of a sense of tradition,” she says, noting that she and Bob both served terms as president. And after all, she was no stranger to the nuts and bolts of board service. She’d been there helping Bob from the beginning.

“Back in the early days there was no hired director. The board basically worked out of the trunks of their cars,” says Connie, who recalls putting together the organization’s annual mailing on her kitchen table while her children napped.

Eventually the hospital helped the foundation hire a director. “At that point everything changed,” she says. “Everything got easier. We reached the goal. We came up with a plan for how to use the income off the million dollars.”

Since 2005, The Foundation has donated over $1.5 million to KVH, including income from the endowment along with other fundraising, to support a variety of projects. Currently, the foundation is running a campaign to help fund the purchase of the first digital mammography machine at KVH.

Foundation director Michele Wurl calls Connie an enthusiastic volunteer who helps with “virtually every foundation activity.” That includes helping organize the annual Magical Evening, the foundation’s primary fundraising activity as well as leading the annual Tough Enough to Wear Pink campaign during the rodeo. Last year, proceeds funded a free mammogram day.

“We sell beads, t-shirt, bandannas, anything that isn’t tied down. One year we sold a pink bucket because someone wanted it,” Connie says, laughing.

Her laughter – warm and engaging  – is also energizing. That’s classic Connie, Wurl says. “She’s always willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done. She’s smart, funny and truly dedicated to improving health care in this community.”

That the foundation has been as effective as it has been is no accident, says Connie who lauds the relationship between the foundation and KVH administration. “You have to have a good relationship and work together,” she says. “In the past, it wasn’t always that close.”

What makes her proudest she says is “just to hear the positive attitudes of people working here. Every time this hospital gets named in the Top 100 you know people are doing things right.”

How long will she remain on the board? Connie, now 60, flashes a smile. “It’s the same thing I say about 4-H,” she says. “I will do it until I don’t enjoy it – and right now, I enjoy it.”

Jerry Grebb

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Jerry Grebb

From pizza and steak to homemade brownies, Jerry Grebb has an appetite for the good things in life.

But when eating led to unexplained abdominal pain, Grebb got a taste of something different – Kittitas Valley Healthcare.

A Washington State University grad who grew up in Quincy, Grebb, a CPA, fell in love with Ellensburg when he moved here 40 years ago. When his now 38-year-old daughter was born, Grebb also fell in love with KVH Hospital. This past September reminded him why.

For months, Grebb had experienced periodic pain after eating. The week before Labor Day he saw an internal medicine specialist who, suspecting gallstones, scheduled an ultrasound for the following Tuesday. But the Sunday before Labor Day, Grebb landed in the emergency room at KVH Hospital where a CT scan revealed a hiatal hernia.

The bottom of Grebb’s stomach, including the duodenum and beginning of his small intestines, had worked its way into the opening where the esophagus passes through the diaphragm to the stomach. “The opening was stretched or torn,” he says. “Two thirds of my stomach was up in the hernia above my diaphragm.” It was pressing on his heart and lungs and keeping him from normal eating.

Dr. Timothy O’Brien of KVH General Surgery arrived within minutes, ordered Grebb’s stomach evacuated and told Grebb he’d need surgery. But first Grebb would be hospitalized for treatment of a pancreatic inflammation. “I liked Dr. O’Brien’s style,” Grebb says. “He was very matter-of-fact. He’s a very bright man and so plain spoken. He doesn’t try to dazzle you.”

Two days later when Grebb had the previously scheduled ultrasound O’Brien was on hand. So was Dr. Ken Harris, a trusted friend of Grebb’s who runs a private practice out of the KVH General Surgery clinic. So was the newest partner in the KVH General Surgery clinic Dr. Tom Penoyar who is trained in laparoscopic surgery for hiatal hernias, a cutting edge procedure that is less invasive than conventional surgery and results in shorter hospital stays and quicker recovery. “With laparoscopic, it’s one day in the hospital. With conventional, it’s five,” Grebb says.

On Thursday, with Harris assisting, Penoyar operated on Grebb. Working through five small abdominal incisions, Penoyar pulled Grebb’s stomach down from his chest and into proper position and narrowed the hernia by sewing its two edges together. He then wrapped the upper part of Grebb’s stomach around and behind Grebb’s esophagus, sewing the stomach to itself to create a “collar” that will keep it from sliding up into Grebb’s chest.

Called the Nissen technique, Penoyar performed the procedure an estimated 30 times while training in the Boston area. That may not sound like a lot, he says, but the nationwide average during training is six.

On Friday, Grebb went home. On Saturday, he walked downtown. On Monday, he went to work. Not long after, he was eating pizza without problems and calling his experience a perfect collaboration between the old and new guard at KVH.

“Dr. Penoyar has done more hiatal surgeries than Dr. Harris because of where he trained, at a big hospital in Massachusetts,” Grebb says. “It was wonderful that he was able to perform the procedure here. And I was so impressed by the sageness of Dr. O’Brien and Dr. Harris.

“That’s what the punch line is here,” Grebb says. “We’ve got both – the sage older team and the new surgeon trained with the latest technology. I couldn’t have asked for a better outcome.”

Jim & Pam Daly

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Jim & Pam Daly

Jim and Pam Daly know a good investment when they see one.

Case in point: Kittitas Valley Healthcare (KVH), where they’ve been investing time, talent and money for years.

Blame selfishness. They do.

Unabashed Cougar fans, the Dalys’ road to Ellensburg began at WSU. She was 19 and majoring in elementary education when they met; he, 20, and a marketing major. They married 45 years ago this coming September, just before the start of their senior year. Jim landed a banking job in Enterprise, OR, after graduation, then moved on to a job with Pacific Bank in Ellensburg in 1975. They considered it just a stop along his career path until an unexpectedly early promotion to bank manager changed their plans.

Over time, they found plenty of reasons to turn to KVH. There was the night their son Curt landed in the hospital Emergency Department with croup, the C-section Pam had when their daughter Megan was born, the nine arthroscopic surgeries, two knee replacements and shoulder surgery that are part of Jim’s medical history. In the early 1980s, Pam began volunteering with KVH. In 1986, she signed on as a regular volunteer with the hospital’s Imaging Department. That same year, then serving as president of the KVH Auxiliary, she was one of eleven founding members of The Foundation at KVH.

Nearly three decades later, the Dalys decline to specify exactly how much they’ve contributed to the foundation. Suffice it to say, they’re major donors. Pam, now auxiliary treasurer, continues to volunteer in Imaging. Jim, who left banking to become an investment counselor and stockbroker, has served 20-plus years as a member of the foundation board, his expertise instrumental in guiding the foundation’s conservative and successful investment approach.

Supporting KVH is a no-brainer, the Dalys say. The seed for their involvement was planted in the soil of pragmatic self-interest.

“We did it for selfish reasons,” Jim insists. “When you have children you know there are going to be times when they’re going to need medical care and you want them to have good medical care. Our philosophy has always been that we wanted a good place for our family to turn to – and we knew as we got older we’d need a good place, too. It’s putting our money where our mouth is.”

Good investments pay good dividends.The Dalys are pleased with the return they’ve seen on both their time and money.

In the past five years alone, the foundation has raised more than $1.1 million through special events, major and estate gifts, an annual donation appeal and investment earning. In recent years that money has helped fund a new entrance to the Emergency Department, a security system for the Family Birthing Center, state-of-the-art orthopedic surgical equipment and renovation of the Medical Surgical Unit. The auxiliary, which operates the hospital gift shop, helps in various ways, from awarding scholarships to students studying medicine to providing teddy bears for the Emergency Department to knitting caps for newborns to providing flat screen TVs for patient rooms after the hospital was remodeled.

“We’ve seen some really great things happen that we’ve been able to be part of,” Pam says. Jim says he’s “proud of the quality of care and the people who give it – and I’m not just talking doctors. The whole staff really cares about you.”

While there are many good causes, Pam prefers to give locally which makes KVH a slam-dunk. “We believe in this hospital and its focus on community,” she says.

Jim nods agreement, smiling broadly. “Giving back,” he says, “is what we do.”