The entire lives of three Indian Creek High School students have been intertwined.
When they were younger, three Indian Creek students attended the same daycare at Johnson Memorial Health from 12 weeks old to five years old. They attended different elementary schools, moved next to each other in middle school, and volunteer together now in high school.
With the help and persuasion from friends and family, Gabby Schwarts, Colin Roberson and Avery Burress signed up to volunteer every Thursday for the summer at the same hospital that they attended daycare and where their moms work.
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Brooke Schwarts, Gabby’s mom, said the entire sequence of event is coincidental.
Their parents were strangers before they began working together at Johnson Memorial, and unplanned, became pregnant at the same time. One by one, on the same day, they walked into their bosses office to deliver the news.
They lived in different towns and attended different elementary schools. Until middle school, when Brooke Schwarts and her family moved to Trafalgar. And so did the Roberson and the Burress family. They all live in the same neighborhood, just blocks away from each other. Brooke Schwarts said she feels like she has her own built-in village that has helped raise her daughter.
Aside from giving them something to do, Gabby Schwarts said she enjoys helping out at the hospital, even if it’s in small ways. It’s been something that they have wanted to do for awhile, Colin Roberson said, but this year was the year they were finally old enough to volunteer.
The idea was appealing to Colin, he said, because not only would he be able to help out, but it will also be a good resume starter.
At the hospital, Colin, Gabby and Avery work away from their parents, helping out in the gift shop, walking patients back to their rooms after surgeries and helping with paperwork.
“Even though it’s not much, they still say that they are grateful that we help out,” Colin Roberson said.
Brooke Schwarts said she hopes the experience teaches the teens how to be outgoing, guide them on their future career paths, and teach them how to help beyond the obvious needs of people. Even if one of the teens decides that they don’t want to go into medicine, they experience will still be good exposure, Brooke Schwarts said.
“It’s such a blessing to have them back here with us at the hospital as volunteers, when it seems like they were just in the daycare as little people,” she said.
