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Donations Put Health Agency in Driver’s Seat

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Pat McDonough and other workers for a local home-nursing agency first spied the vintage white ambulance parked on a street near their Ventura office.

Soon they got an irresistible urge to buy the 1956 Cadillac, thinking that such a conspicuous vehicle would be good publicity for their nonprofit agency, the Livingston Memorial Visiting Nurse Assn.

“Every day at lunch we would say, ‘We have to get that ambulance,’ ” said McDonough, hospice manager for the agency.

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The problem was getting the $2,500 to purchase the car from its Ventura owner.

Then, Livingston volunteers in June recruited some Ventura County government workers to help.

Lula Jordan, a senior personnel assistant for the county, and Georgia Dennehey, an elections assistant, spread the word among fellow employees at the County Government Center.

Jordan and Dennehey spent their lunch hours at a folding table set up outside the Government Center, talking up the cause and collecting cash in a shoe box.

Some county employees emptied the change from their pockets for the fund

raising drive.

A few even gave their lunch money, Dennehey said.

In the end, hundreds of county workers pitched in to raise the $2,500, which was officially handed over to Livingston officials Tuesday.

Dennehey said the fund-raising effort “was an opportunity for county employees to make a contribution to the community.”

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