Community notebook: End of era as Stanford Medical Center Auxiliary dissolves

I think you've got too many zeroes for the group's last gift. I'm assuming it should be a $525,000 donation, not $525 million.

Thank you, reader, for alerting us to that error. You are correct: The Auxiliary contributed $525,000.

Not to be confused with the Allied Arts Guild (Menlo Park) --- which supports the Packard Children's Hospital.

The volunteers made the 'hospital experience' manageable. I can tell the difference; and if we could, we'd go to El Camino Hospital. Stanford Hospital experience is not what it once was. I am sorry that the Auxilliary closed down. The 'pink ladies' will always be remembered. God Bless them all. The entire hospital seems to different.

I have fond memories of my wife, Ganet, volunteering there for several years. She always looked nice in her uniform and she met a lot of other volunteers and they became friends. They took their work very seriously and helped make hospital stays and departures comfortable for patients. Garnet died last year. Her 1000 hour pin is still in her jewelry box.

The hospital is another corporate conglomarence. For a non profit it is certainly enjoying a remarkable growth period. Sad that the community is pushed aside during this megalomania period. How can the hospital not support the auxiliary??? Shame shame shame.. I'm off to kaiser

Kudos to the Stanford Medical Auxiliary on their classy gifts to the hospital upon their closing down. They have been a wonderful organization with their considerate assistance for patients and staff at Stanford. They will be missed.

The vote to wind down a civic organization is bold, and the board should be commended for leadership that sometimes take a sad but realistic turn. I am confident that compassion has not left our community, and new venues proper for new generations will emerge. We have other organizations in town that have similar circumstance, and there are lessons to be learned for all. My own context was being part of winding down Briarpatch community market years ago, and these decisions are made not for love of the mission.

First of all, Gale, allow me to offer my condolences on Garnet's passing. I know it leaves a terrible void. If she was a pink lady, she was also a great lady.

I have to say that for at least the last twenty years, Stanford Hospital has had Kaiser-quality medical care at 2-3 times El Camino Hospital prices! Some non-profit!

Now that the pink ladies are gone, THAT leaves a void! There is no one to soften the crude Stanford experience. I could not have born it otherwise a few years ago when my leg was broken and mangled and my knee dislocated. I was so disappointed to find out my surgeon could not work at either Sequoia or El Camino, so I was stuck with Stanford. The post-op care was horrid, I couldn't got ice packs fort leg, even though the doc ordered them to be applied every two hours. My morphine pump ran out of juice every night.

The pink ladies were the only ones to successfully intercede. The ONLY time I got ice packs were when a pink lady brought them.

Fortunately for me, my current insurance company forbids me to use Stanford. The reason: overpriced sub-standard care.

Boggles the mind that anyone would donate a penny to Stanford outside of a quid pro for their child's admission, or some such. As has been pointed out by a past CA Senate candidate, Stanford, Harvard, and similar schools with massive endowments earning annual returns well beyond what it costs to run a university, are really just large hedge funds, with nominal universities attached for appearance sake.

As a former candy striper with hundreds of hours in patient services, emergency room and gift shop, it is a sad day for me the Auxiliary has died. It was a great organization for high schoolers to get a view into the day-to-day life at a hospital. We had great training and grew up fast with that exposure to the adult world. As volunteers we had the time always to give to patients, families and staff that the paid staff rarely had. Sometimes just the little things we did like making fresh and free coffee in the ER made worried families smile. Or taking a patient stuck in hospital room alone and too long on a wheelchair tour of the hospital brightened that patient's day. For many women shut out of the job market decades ago it was a godsend for ladies who had skills that their "society" or families disliked to let them use at paid jobs. A few retired gentlemen also joined in for regular weekly volunteer work.

But, times do change. Women from all backgrounds are now very welcome in the work force. Ladies auxiliaries and arts service guilds are dying all over. Unions want no volunteers ever, anywhere in my experience doing jobs "someone should be paid for and giving dues to a union!" The Hospital gift shop has the same merchandise... but brusque service and more expensive prices. And, each time I go to that hospital I see fewer smiling faces. Too bad.

Sort of off-topic, but Ancient Lady's point about unions vs volunteers is something I've always wondered about: How do volunteers get away with violating minimum wage laws? If I can volunteer to work for free, how come I can't volunteer to work for $6/hr? It certainly has nothing to do with professionalism or the usefulness of the task. I suspect the tax-man is also happy to see the waning days of volunteers.

In answer to "musical" - the volunteers of the Stanford Medical Center Auxiliary were not employees of Stanford Hospital. They worked for their own non-profit organization which has very different rules. Disbanding the organization was not as simple as saying "we are disbanded." They had to follow quite explicit guidelines and that is why it took so much planning on the Auxiliary's part. Even so, they were generous and gracious to the institution where they worked for so long (since 1929.)

I don't know the details, but one reason that the Auxiliary is giving all its assets to Stanford Hospital may be a contractual obligation. Remember, the link between the two organizations was forged way back when volunteers were a more integral part of hospital operations, and the volunteers were motivated more by patriotic duty than by résumé building. I wouldn't be surprised to discover that the founding articles of the Auxiliary specifies that their assets would be transferred to Stanford Hospital if there were a dissolution, which would make perfect sense in the context of the day.

Fast forward to 2015, where Stanford Hospital is now run as a corporation, and patient care is managed as a profit center. This asset transfer makes less sense for the Auxiliary, but they may be bound by their original articles, and the hospital is certainly not going to let half a million dollars slip away!