Moving mountains to make a difference
When told 18 months ago she'd need to go on dialysis after a sudden and unexpected drop in her kidney function, Crystal Mountain thought, OK, it's better than the alternative.
Then, at just 41 years old, another organ gave out on her a year ago and the Surrey woman had a heart attack in January 2020, followed by heart surgery last March.
“This young woman has persevered through so much personal grief and sadness, yet continues to think of others and gives, despite her own struggles and monumental health issues,” Trudy Feely, a friend of Mountain's aunt, said in nominating Mountain as a COVID-19 hero.
Because of the heart medication she is on, Mountain has been taken off the transplant waiting list for a year. She could have bowed her head and cursed her fate, no one would blame her.
Instead, she bought 600 Christmas cards at the beginning of December, wrote a note in each and sent them to isolated seniors in care homes.
That mission accomplished, she moved on to her next project: She applied to the United Way for a grant so she could make 80 Christmas gift bags for homeless people, and distributed them on Dec. 20.
“I'm off work, so I'm bored,” Mountain said self-deprecatingly — she's on medical leave, for obvious reasons, from her position as a lab assistant at B.C. Children's Hospital in Vancouver. But only the scope of her giving changed — along with her mother and daughter, she has delivered gift hampers to the homeless in the past, the United Way grant just allowed her to do it on a much larger scale.
The 600 Christmas cards, that came out of her own pocket. “It's something my mom and I decided to do for seniors. I figured I'd help people if I can.”