‘I’ve got the secret. . . . Attitude is a free commodity.’

A year has passed since I joined the ladies of TGI Care, then a year-old volunteer support group for the Center for Rehabilitation Medicine at Northridge Hospital, for their first membership luncheon and boutique at the Sheraton Premiere Hotel in Universal City.

They asked me back for their second luncheon last week, which was held at the same place.

I am happy to report that TGI Care has prospered again this year, having raised $15,000, volunteered 1,200 hours in the rehabilitation center and added about 100 supporters, including some men.

They have also grown more circumspect in their relations with the press.

Beverly Korbin, a formidable-looking woman in a stately beige dress, greeted me at the door.

Korbin is the founder of TGI Care, which means, “Thank God I Care.” She dedicated herself to helping the center, where people who have had paralyzing injuries or diseases learn how to run their lives again, after first her father, who had a stroke, and then a friend of the family, who was shot during a holdup, went there.

She gave me a friendly handshake and then reminded me that after last year’s luncheon I reported my conversation with the Needle Eaters, a fun group of women I was assigned to sit with. They told me that their husbands gave their knitting group that name because they always seemed to eat as much as they knit.

Korbin said the Needle Eaters had enjoyed the attention. But she said she hoped to expose me this year to the working end of TGI Care.

She placed me next to the center’s medical director, Meredith Hale, and his wife, Carol.

Last year Hale gave a short talk in which he said that the time that TGI Care volunteers spend in the rehabilitation center gives the patients something that none of the paid staff can--the message that somebody out there loves them.

I hadn’t mentioned his talk. I suppose I had written so much on the Needle Eaters that I only had enough space left to summarize the keynote talk by school board member Roberta M. Weintraub, who got to know the rehabilitation center when the daughter of a friend recovered there from an injury received in an auto accident.

Hale didn’t mention the slight. With an easy manner he introduced me to the others at the table, beginning with Nancy Brown.

“Nancy’s a lawyer,” Hale said. “Nancy was a guest of ours for four months.”

He said she had had viral encephalitis, a viral attack on the brain tissue that paralyzed her.

“I got better,” Nancy said, smiling.

Hale pointed across the table to Cyd Hedge, the wife of one of the doctors on the unit.

Her husband was rendered a paraplegic by a virus and works from a wheelchair, Hale said.

While we ate an elegant salad of French endives, asparagus and red cabbage, a woman holding a wicker basket walked up to ask Hale if he would buy a raffle ticket. He pulled a $20 bill from a money clip and took a dozen tickets.

“Mr. Smith, this is Edna,” Hale said, introducing the ticket seller. “Edna’s son was a patient with us.”

“Jerry’s in Vegas today,” Edna said cheerily. “He’s just learning how to use his computerized wheelchair.”

“He just graduated from the USC Dental School,” Hale added.

Hale then briefed me on some of the things TGI Care volunteers do, such as preparing shopping lists, cooking meals and washing dishes at the TGI Care House, just across the street from the hospital.

“Carol, tell Mr. Smith about the TGI Care House,” he told his wife.

Carol Hale said that patients who have left the rehabilitation unit go to the house several days a week for treatment and therapy. She said they do exercises to improve their hand-eye coordination, using computers purchased for the house by TGI Care.

“You don’t have to do that cone thing anymore?” Nancy Brown asked in astonishment. During her rehabilitation, Brown said, she had to do an exercise in which she placed a cone over a peg.

“Unbelievably boring,” she said. “I had to do that every day for months. I couldn’t do it all the time. It was irritating not to be able to do something that simple. The day I said, ‘No,’ that was a liberating day.”

This year Hale didn’t give a talk.

Norman Baker, the new president of TGI Care, gave the inspirational address.

Baker, a small man who walks with a shadow of a limp, said he was totally paralyzed only three years ago after falling off a three-wheel dirt bike.

“The doctor said, ‘You’re never walking again,’ ” Baker said. “I said, ‘No problem. I’ve got the secret.’ Attitude is a free commodity. . . . A little bit of love. A little bit of compassion. A little bit of honesty. One incredible amount of friends that we have here today.

“I tell the story that one of the reasons I got well was that God was upstairs, OK? All these wonderful people when I got hurt poured their hearts out. Friends. Mostly business associates that I owed money to--they were right there. They sent their good wishes upstairs. God heard and says, ‘Who is this Norman Baker? Will somebody get him well so we can take care of the other people, please?’ ”

The moral of this story, of course, is that, because TGI Care was there, he did get well.

So how’s that, Beverly? Did I do OK? Next year can I sit with the Needle Eaters again?