Intermountain Health’s Lutheran Medical Center celebrated a very special person this week. It honored Bonnie Hayes, a prolific volunteer who, for more than four decades, took medical staff, volunteers and patients under her wing. The short ceremony featured cake and lots of kind words.
In the early 70s, Bonnie Hayes’ husband Rod worked as a firefighter. At the time, all trauma response calls were filtered onto one line, coming over her husband’s radio.
“There was a device about the size of a small safe, and it was green, it would go off in the middle of the night for a fire call,” Rod said. “But when Bonnie started hearing that it would be a case of sexual assault, she started getting up and coming with me.”
After overhearing a sexual assault victim being treated poorly by a first responder, Bonnie wanted to make sure that didn’t happen to anyone else.
“I was angry with what was happening to that woman,” Bonnie said.
In 1978, Bonnie took a first-of-its-kind class to help her navigate these situations and provide support to emergency room patients who were victims of sexual assault. She started volunteering at Intermountain Health’s Lutheran Medical Center alongside Rod, who also wanted to help out after he realized many of the victims were men.
“He said, ‘Well do you guys need males?’ So he then went through the training, and it was so wondrous. At two in the morning, the phone would ring and I’d answer it they’d say, ‘Please we need to speak to Rod, you can go back to sleep,’” Bonnie joked, recalling one of many late-night phone calls she got from the hospital.
On April 17, Lutheran Medical Center celebrated Bonnie for her 45 years of serving patients. She was joined by about 25 hospital volunteers, staff and family members including Rod, to whom she’s been married for 54 years.
“Did you know Bonnie worked for over 20,000 hours?” Rod proudly announced.
Bonnie, who has also raised two children with Rod, volunteered at the hospital for as many hours as someone working 40 hours a week. She worked as a teacher in addition to volunteering, retiring after her 30-year career in 2001. Her volunteer work continued after retirement when she served as chairman of the volunteer leadership committee and a coordinator of hospital fundraisers. Colleagues said she always went out of her way to make patients and staff feel comfortable.
“Bonnie was very welcoming, she was like, ‘I’ll teach you whatever you need to know. I’ve been here for 45 years.’ She was open to showing you the ropes,” said Heather Speaks, the manager of integrative health at Lutheran. “I had worked at Lutheran for 17 years but didn’t know much about the volunteer program and truly how much they give back to the hospital, and that they’re part of every single aspect of the hospital, until I took this job and I met Bonnie.”
Bonnie said the only thing she wished she could have changed about the program when she was volunteering was access to the morning-after pill, which wasn’t always guaranteed to be prescribed. Even today, she said this is still an issue, stating we’ve somewhat “moved backward” as a society in terms of reproductive healthcare.
However, the better part of the job, she said, was being able to actually help people and be there to support families through trauma.
“I was dealing with families that were hysterical, and being able to kind of calm them down a little bit and I could guide them through the process,” Bonnie said at the ceremony Wednesday. “It never made it okay. But it gave them a doorway to some light, some hope.”