(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome back to Consider This.

We have so much to consider, and again, this beautiful set.

It's so light and bright and airy, and I have a light and bright and airy guest with me right now.

Her name is Micki McCarthy, and she is a fundraiser extraordinaire.

But we wanna, I mean, people, it's hard to forget once they see you with that beautiful, cute hair and you always have great glasses on.

But you know what?

We don't know a whole lot about you.

So where did you come from?

- Oh my goodness.

I came from California, which explains a lot with the things that I've done.

But I was born and raised in California and moved to Illinois when I met the man I was going to marry.

- Okay, well let's go back to California because I mean, you don't look- Well, you were a child of the sixties.

- I was.

- You did something that a lot of people don't do.

First of all, you went to high school.

You had a high school boyfriend who joined the Navy.

- He did, he joined the Navy.

He was a year ahead of me, so he had graduated, and Bob had joined the Navy.

We did not have proms, we had Christmas formals, so it was my senior year, and he was going to be done with basic, and he was going to come and take me to the Christmas formal.

And Bob had had a lot of struggles.

There were a lot of drugs during that time.

- [Christine] So he went to Vietnam?

- And he, well, that's what happened.

He came back from basic, he actually stood me up.

He did not come and pick me up for the Christmas formal.

And the next morning, his brother and best friend came to the house and Bob, he had received his orders for Vietnam, and it was too much, with everything else he had dealt with in his life, and he had taken his own life.

- Oh gosh.

- [Micki] And it was at his funeral, was the very first time that I had ever heard the gospel was at his funeral, and it really made an impact on me.

- So from there, and you were the youngest of how many children?

- I was the youngest of three.

So my mom, my folks had divorced when I was very young, so my mom raised us, and so my brother and my sister had already moved on, and I was the last one at home.

Mom did not know what to do with me, because now I was going to church all the time and that, and she came home the spring of my senior year and said, "I just bought a one bedroom condo in an adults only complex.

What are you gonna do?"

- Oh, well, that's a surprise, so.

- That was a surprise, but luckily, so I was 17, graduated from high school, and I was very fortunate, especially in that time period because there were lots of unusual groups, let's put it that way, in Southern California.

- Back in the late sixties.

- Yeah, and this was late sixties, early seventies, and I was very fortunate that I was involved with Calvary Chapel, which if anyone has seen the movie Jesus Revolution, that was the church, that was Chuck Smith was our pastor, and Calvary Chapel was where I went.

They had Christian communes that were dotted up and down the coast that were basically safe houses for the kids that were hitchhiking up and down the coast, getting off of drugs and what have you.

So when I graduated from high school, I moved to a Christian commune and Costa Mesa.

- Commune just sounds bad.

- It does, but it was really- - Not this one particular.

- It was an amazing experience.

We had probably 30 kids that lived there, but they were very strict.

The boys lived- - [Christine] On one side.

- In one side, the girls had upstairs.

They were very strict.

It was really a safe place for kids to find themselves.

- And did you work to contribute to the commune?

- It was a little old school.

The boys worked to contribute to the commune- - [Christine] And you couldn't.

- And the girls also took care of a lot of the ministry for the other girls.

We had pregnant teenagers come through that needed prenatal care and other healthcare.

We had girls with children that were hitchhiking up and down.

In fact, my daughter Carmen is named after the child of a young lady that I met there who was one of the kindest souls I've ever met in my life, and her daughter was named Carmen.

She was two years old, and so when I had my daughter, I really wanted to remember this time in my life and this girl who had a real impact on me.

She had hitchhiked from Oregon.

- What a beautiful story.

All right, so then now you are living in the commune and then you left the commune to go visit your sister.

Where was your sister at the time?

- I lived there for about a year before I moved out, and so my sister had gotten married young, and she was working at just a local restaurant, and unfortunately she and her husband, it was as amicable as a divorce could be, but they were in the throes of getting a divorce, and Jim, her husband, needed to have someone serve Sherry with the divorce papers.

So I would just happen to stop at the restaurant to say hi to Sherry, and she said, oh, Jimmy is in the lounge having something to drink.

And it turned out that Jim had been there with his best friend, they were MPs in the Marines, to serve Sherry the divorce papers.

They went in, and they were waiting for Sherry to get off work.

So I said it was amicable.

So I went in, said hi to Jimmy, gave him a hug.

He introduced me to his friend.

Little did I know, I just met my husband.

- How about it?

- The day that he served my sister with divorce papers.

- Now that's a circuitous route, that's for sure.

- Yeah, so the four of us went out to dinner after that.

- Oh, that's crazy.

All right, so then you met Mac.

- I met Mac.

It was about a year later that he had graduated from college, he gotten outta the Marine Corps, and there was no work out in California for him, and so.

- [Christine] He's a hydraulic engineer?

- He is a hydraulics and heavy equipment.

And his parents lived in, they weren't from Elmwood, but they lived there with, I believe there were still eight siblings at home.

He's from a family of 10 kids.

- [Christine] Good Catholics.

Okay.

- Good Catholics.

And so he came out to Elmwood to see the family and ended up getting what was supposed to be a temporary summer job with a local sea company and was there for 22 years.

So what brought me to Elmwood was my husband to be, we were married in Elmwood.

- [Christine] Love, it'll do it every time.

- Love brought me to Elmwood, yes.

- It'll do it every time.

So you're married and you're living in central Illinois.

You probably didn't even know where Canton or Peoria, Illinois was when you lived the California life.

- Oh, not only that, I'll never forget my first central Illinois winter.

I had never been so cold in my life.

- That was the winter of '77?

- We were married in '76.

- Okay, so the winter of '77, that was a bad one.

- It was a bad one, it was.

And I had my California winter coat.

- [Christine] Aha, that really went far.

- Yeah, it did - To keep you warm in the house.

- Pretty much, pretty much, yeah, yeah.

So that was an adjustment.

But eventually I got a good Illinois winter coat, and we survived and ended up raising our four children in Elmwood.

I was really involved with the community.

I served on our local school board.

It's a K through 12, Elmwood Community Unit 322, excuse me.

And the last term, I served as president on the school board.

And then Carmen went off to college.

I had another one that was quickly approaching college, the other two high school, and I knew I needed to... - [Christine] Supplement the family income.

- Oh yeah, time was coming, and that's what brought me to Bradley.

- [Christine] All right, so tell me about that.

And you started out...?

Yeah, how did you start?

- Well, I had, when the kids were little, I finally had a chance to go to college, and so I started out at ICC with accountancy, and that gave me the in to, at Bradley, I was given a position in the controller's office.

Bradley has a policy, they did at the time, I don't know if they still do, that once you're there six months, you can transfer within the university if there's another area, and after six months I had the opportunity to transfer into advancement, and that was my beginning of learning about fundraising.

- All right, so you took some classes, and you got a degree in?

- I studied sociology and religious studies.

- Okay, that has a lot to do with accountancy, just saying - No, but it has a lot to do with people.

- It sure does.

- It does, and it really broadened the scope of my view of the world in such an amazing way.

I'm very grateful for that.

- Okay, so you have that degree, and you're in the controller's office.

- And then I moved to advancement, and in advancement, I worked for, let's see, the Foster College of Business and then Liberal Arts and Sciences.

But what I really loved is, so John Shorrock I will never forget.

John is our VP Head of Advancement, and Ken Huntsman, they truly introduced me to what donor-centered fundraising is all about.

- Relationships.

- [Micki] Relationships.

And I will never forget John, I was in the annual fund towards the end of my time with advancement, and I remember John coming in and talking to the students who were new, new to the annual fund, so they're callers to call the alumni, and this particular group of first time callers were going to call the alums who had just graduated.

And John came in, and he said, "I don't care if they give $10, you treat it like it's a million, because who knows?

In 10, 20 years, it just might be."

- Exactly.

- And he said, "The most important thing you do is you listen.

You listen to them."

I'll never forget that.

- What great advice.

And then you managed to use it as you continued, so you went from advancement to the foundation office?

- I went from advancement to, I actually spent a couple of years in student activities, which was wonderful, and that was because of the classes I was taking.

The schedule just worked out better.

But my kids still love to tell the story that I got to make cookies for Ludicrous and Black Eyed Peas - Well, sounds worth it.

- So we had that part of it.

I always thought it was part of development though, because when you're calling alums, you want them to have a really good school experience, and I felt like I was able to do that through student activities.

From there, I had an opportunity.

My kids had graduated, so many of the kids that I was so close to at Bradley had graduated, and I thought, if I'm going to make a change, now's the time.

And I had the opportunity to go to Easterseals and work for Steve Thompson, which was an amazing experience.

Steve introduced me to what mission driven fundraising is about.

It is one thing to have donor centered, which is so important, but to have that mission driven, which was a perfect segue to when I went to OSF.

So I remember being at Easterseals and Steve had gone over to Children's Hospital.

It was just being built, and they were going to have the topping off ceremony, and so a bunch of us went out with Easterseals families.

We went out and we stood in the parking lot of Easterseals.

'cause you could see where the construction was.

And I remember that there were families with tears in their eyes, and I didn't know that much about OSF, and I said, what's going on?

What did I miss?

And they said, no, this means we don't have to travel to see the specialists that our children need.

We get to stay home.

And that had such an impact on me.

- [Christine] Again, a mission.

- A mission.

And it was shortly after that, when the construction was done, I had an opportunity now to go and join the OSF Foundation.

Tom Hammerton I knew when I was at Bradley.

I have so much respect for this man, and I thought if I ever had an opportunity to work with him again, as tough as it was to leave Easterseals, I knew I had to make this change.

And looking back, and Chris, you and I have talked about this, looking back, I feel like all of this was orchestrated of one thing led to another, led to another.

When I remember being, one of the first responsibilities at the OSF Foundation was to give public tours.

- Of the brand new building.

- To Children's Hospital.

And I remember walking through there with a family and the mom said, "This is the most wonderful place you don't ever wanna be," and I thought, that's it exactly.

- It makes total sense, exactly.

- And little did I know that in just a little over 10 years, how desperately I was gonna need that place.

- So let's talk about that.

You have, well, you have children living all over.

- All over.

- But you have a son and his wife and children who live in Ireland.

- Yes.

- And they had a baby.

And what year was that?

Was that 2020?

- That was in March of '21, so that was, COVID was in full bloom, and vaccines were just starting to get rolled out, and Little Jay was born, and they thought his head looked a little big, so they did an MRI, he was a month early.

- They thought maybe he had hydrocephalus.

- Hydrocephalus or something like that.

And they came back with a diagnosis that he had three brain malformations that were life limiting, that he would not survive this, and as much as... it was a great hospital, but it didn't have the pediatric care, and here I had a background at Easterseals, I had a background I knew at Children's Hospital.

- And you knew who the doctors were to talk to.

- And I knew who to talk to, and the kids were devastated.

They didn't know what to do, and they basically were sent home with their baby, with palliative care and said, "I'm sorry.

He will most likely seize himself to death."

- [Christine] Oh gosh.

- And we couldn't travel because we didn't have vaccines, and you couldn't get on a plane without a vaccine, so we had to wait.

Jay was eight weeks old, and in that time we did a lot of talking back and forth and my husband and I looked at each other and we said, "We have to bring him here."

- You had no other choice really.

- And the miracle in my eyes is the fact that my son and his wife trusted us and they gave us guardianship of Jay so that we could be full-time grandma, grandpa, and take care of this little boy for as long as we had him.

So eight weeks old, we went over and spent time with the family there, helping them with everything that we needed to do, and then Mac and I looked at each other and said, "What are we doing?"

But we knew we had to, and brought him home.

And within two days we were Children's Hospital, and we had Easterseals therapists coming to the house with masks and the whole bit and the face shields and that, and Easterseals or at Children's Hospital, we had neurology going on.

We had ortho, he was born breach, so we had that going on.

He had a little hole in his heart, so we had congenital heart going on.

All these places that I had fundraised for, all these places that I had given tours of, and now I am a grateful grandma with my little- - Bundle of joy.

- Bundle of joy, and the thing was, they had a data breach in Ireland, so all we had were the paper reports that we came over with.

We had no scans, we had nothing.

And so we had to go by what the paper said, and he continued to do well and we thought, "We're just having a good spell right now."

And so he continued with therapy.

The doctors were continuing to care for as if he were a child with these types of illnesses or disorders, and we had to wait for safety reasons.

We had to wait until he was seven months gestational, so since he was a month early, to do an MRI, and I will never forget our neurologist, our pediatric neurologist, Dr. Akbar was just a godsend.

And she had a handpicked team because she kept looking at this child and saying, "I don't see it, but that's what it says."

And I went to Children's, Mac and I went to Children's with Jay, got him in his little gown, got him all ready to go.

And they handed him to me and put us both on the gurney and rolled us into the MRI suite, and within 30 minutes it was done.

And I have to tell you though, I went, so after they did the MRI, I had to go to the waiting area.

I came back into his room, he was still asleep, but it was one of his nurses that was holding him, laying in the bed, and she goes, "I couldn't let this child wake up not have anyone here."

That's the kind of care, that's why I wanna be on the Children's hospital board.

That's the story.

And that, but I will tell you that we knew, probably it was within about two hours of that, Dr. Akbar texted me, she said, "I'm in children's clinic, I'll call you as soon as I'm done.

It's good news."

- [Christine] Good, he's okay.

- He's okay, there were no brain malformations.

- Another Holy Spirit thing.

Then he got to go home to Ireland to be with family, which is good.

- He went home.

- That's good.

- And he is now a big brother, so they've got three boys, which is perfect karma for my son to have three boys.

- All right, so now that's a happy story.

Then you had a not so happy story about six years ago involving your sister.

You two were very, very close.

- My sister and I were Irish twins, 13 months apart.

She was my best friend.

I have said she was my champion.

I was the youngest.

Sherry was always looking out for me.

My mom and Sherry are two of the strongest women I've ever known, and to lose both of them, I was pretty much a lost soul.

But Sherry sadly was a victim of domestic violence and was shot, and I'm actually leaving next week.

And with the trial is finally on.

But during that time, after we lost Sherry, a friend gave me a gift certificate to go and get a tree to plant in her memory.

- You told me this, I love this one, so share it.

- And we went to the nursery and I knew what I was looking for, but I could not see it in with all the trees, and it was a cloudy day, and I know it sounds corny, but it was a cloudy day, and you know how the sun will kind of break through the clouds, and way in the back of the nursery, the sun came down and I saw a bunch of trees back there and I saw a little glint of red, and I really had wanted a red maple.

And I asked the girl, the sales person, and she said, "Ooh, those are park grade trees.

They've been damaged and somehow, and they'll be going into parks and public areas."

And I said, I really would love to go see that.

And so we walked the way back there and I saw the tree that had caught my eye, and it had a big gash down the trunk, and she said it had been damaged by a piece of equipment when they were transplanting it.

And she said, "It's healed over, but it will always have a scar."

And my eyes teared up, and I said, "That's my tree."

And that tree is in my yard now, and I call it my wounded tree.

- Well, you are writing a book about that.

But really quickly, we have about five minutes left, so let's get to part of your fundraising now.

So you're on the Children's Hospital board.

- I'm on the Children's Hospital board.

I just was invited to join the Heart of Illinois United Way board, which I'm so excited about because I know OSF and, and the services were amazing.

I know Easterseals, but I really wanna know more about the nonprofits, the other, the smaller ones that are in our area.

My boss, Tom Hammerton always said, "A rising tide raises all ships," and when I think of the services that I needed when I was in need, and I think of all of these nonprofits that have these amazing services, I wanna learn about those so that if I hear of someone else who needs something, I can say, "Oh, did you know you could go here?"

So I'm very anxious for that, and then- - And when do you start on that board?

We were just brought onto the board at their annual meeting, so our first meetings are coming up this summer, and then I'm doing some consulting work because Planned Giving, which we really didn't get into when I was at OSF, I was asked to start the Planned Giving program.

- All right, so explain that really quickly.

- So Planned Giving, working with people who want to give a gift through their estate plan.

And that was such an eye-opener because you talk about donor-centered fundraising and then you bring Planned Giving, the most personal gift that anyone could give when somebody's talking about, "I'm going to remember my children, my grandchildren, whomever."

- A legacy.

- And now this organization is dear enough to them to be reminded of that.

I fell in love with Planned Giving.

So I was the director of Planned Giving and gift planning for OSF for about 10 years.

And now I'm doing some consulting work and volunteer work to try and help these smaller nonprofits incorporate some Planned Giving components because it's such an amazing gift that people want to give.

And sometimes you just need to plant the seed of, "Did you ever think of...?"

- Consider this.

- Consider this.

Absolutely.

- So then you're also working on a community health center?

- I am, so I'm also on the board of the Elmwood Community Foundation, and we're partnered with the Greater Peoria family YMCA and with Graham Health System who is dedicated to the rural communities and bringing access to care, medical care.

They have Graham Hospital, which is an amazing little hospital in Canton, Illinois under the leadership of Bob Sinoff.

And so we are, the three groups have come together and we are building a community wellness center and YMCA for the rural communities of rural Peoria, Knox, and Fulton Counties, and it will serve just over 18,000 people.

So we're really excited about bringing that to the rural communities.

- And 18,000 people.

And did you work with Bradley to figure out-?

Who determined how many people were in that area?

- I've only been on the board for about a year.

They have been working on this.

You had Bill Lingobreck on your show and talked about the book that he and Carl Taylor had written.

Carl was really the grandfather of this idea, bringing something like this to the rural communities.

He's an Elmwood boy, and they've been working on this for eight years or better, doing the due diligence and all of the surveying.

They worked with Bradley, they worked with the... - With the Y.

- And with the Y, University of Illinois.

In Champaign, they did an economic impact study, which is phenomenal.

So the due diligence of the viability of this is incredible, and we've got all that documentation for anybody to look at, but it's very interesting to see what they did, to see whether or not - [Christine] It's the need.

- The need is there, absolutely.

Yeah, so that's gonna be a great thing.

- Well, we're done.

When might it be built or do you know?

I mean, I have 30 seconds.

- We're in campaign mode now.

We're hoping for groundbreaking in 2005, and if anybody, can I make a plug if anybody wants to look at the website?

- [Christine] Get the website quick.

- ImagineCWC.org.

- All right, sounds great.

- Thank you.

- Thank you so much.

As soon as we find out if your book's been published, we'll have you back to see the- - Thank you, it's a children's book.

- It'll be perfect.

- Thank you.

- All right, thanks, Micki.

Thank you for joining us.

Hope you enjoyed hearing her story.

It's pretty interesting.

If you have any ideas, get ahold of me here at the station and in the meantime, stay healthy and well.

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