14,000 hours, zero money … and she loves her job

Melissa Schorr

Thursday, May 8, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

Can you imagine holding down the same job for 19 years?

A job that was sometimes tedious (filing medical records) and always required an hour-and-a-half commute each way -- by bus.

Would you keep it up?

What if you suffered a heart attack, then a stroke? What if you went blind in one eye from diabetes and needed a walker to get around and a magnifying glass to see?

Think you'd keep working, even so?

OK, what if -- and here's the surefire deal-breaker -- in all that time, you never earned a red cent?

Fohget-about-it.

Well, then, you're not Leona Johnivan, a permanent fixture in the Desert Springs Hospital's medical records department since 1978.

For all the recent lip service given to volunteerism, Leona puts -- and leaves -- her money where her mouth is.

"You shouldn't expect to get paid for everything you do," says the veteran volunteer. "I think you should give something back.

"You get a real good feeling. I think people should think about that instead of 'I gotta get paid.' They would feel so much greater."

Calling the hospital her "extended family," Johnivan can barely walk down its carpeted corridors without a receiving line forming to greet her.

Even her yellow volunteer jacket glows brighter than anyone else's. On it, she wears two tiny medals, attesting to the 14,000 volunteer hours -- and counting -- she has put in, more than any of the hospital's 125 other volunteers.

"She's our top dog," said Volunteer Director Anita Hershberger.

In addition to raising her own three children, now grown, she took in four foster kids. She also worked at the Weekend Emergency Assistance Program, an emergency food kitchen, during the time she was still putting in 40 hour weeks at the hospital.

Now due to health, she has had to cut back to four hours four times a week -- plus her three-hour daily commute.

It is quite possible to spend an hour with 67-year-old great-grandmother and almost miss the truly important details of her life. Like the offhanded remark she drops about her marriage at age 17.

Quickly doing the math, wouldn't that make this year her 50th wedding anniversary?

"Yep, last night," she replies.

She elaborates only when pressed, that she is looking forward to a celebratory dinner at the Outback restaurant that night and using her gift -- a new set of cookware from her husband, Harold.

Before the couple moved permanently to Las Vegas in 1957, Johnivan worked on the factory lines in Michigan and Florida, assembling televisions, Ford automobiles and hypodermic needles. "I didn't know in later years I'd use 'em," she comments wryly, referring to her insulin shots.

She was exposed to the medical field early on, working as a candy striper during high school in East Lansing, Mich., but later found she preferred sticking to the back office.

"I can't deal with people's illnesses," she explains. "It gets to me, and you can't let them see you feel bad."

She came to Desert Springs after working for a Las Vegas doctor affiliated with the hospital. "I wanted to help," she shrugs. Her husband, also retired, approved. "He thinks it's good for me."

Although clerical work may not provide the immediate gratification of, say, turning down bed sheets, Johnivan points out she gleans satisfaction in a different way: By eliminating the cost of her salary, her work may help keep the high cost of medical expenses down for the patients.

"Maybe," she theorizes, "you save them money. Sure, you don't see the people -- but you know what you're doing."