Woman amazed by kindness of others

Published 10:39 am Thursday, October 2, 2008

NORTH BEND – When 26-year-old CeCe Napier ended up in the hospital the week before Thanksgiving because of a large kidney stone and severe infection, she thought, “This is hard, but I’ll deal with it.”

She had no idea how she would pay the medical bills that were stacking up, so when Thadius “Di” Braun, a co-worker at The Nursery at Mount Si, told her he had set up a benefit fund to help her, she was amazed and grateful.

“It’s not anything that I would have ever expected anyone to do,” Napier said.

But for Braun, the landscape manager at the nursery, helping her was just the natural thing to do.

“I don’t understand why everyone wouldn’t want to take care of the people that make their world a better place to live,” he said.

Napier is back to work as the nursery general manager and is feeling much better, she said. She’s glad the doctors decided they didn’t need to operate right away. Instead, she’s taking a round of antibiotics to get the infection under control and she’s hoping they will be able to break up the kidney stone with lasers instead of cutting her open to remove it.

“I didn’t want to go in for surgery,” she said. “It’s a fortune.”

Napier has been working at the nursery since February. When close friend and nursery employee Erik Lewis died suddenly in an avalanche in January, she said she felt compelled to do what she could to help at the nursery.

Nursery owner Nels Melgaard said she “felt a calling to come and be a part of it.”

“I knew Nels really needed help after Erik died,” Napier said. “This is really what I want to do.”

In the short time that she has been there, her co-workers have grown to love her.

“She’s an incredible, positive, really hard-working, caring individual,” said Christine Earl. “She was a godsend. I call her an Erik send. Without her, I know I wouldn’t have been able to go on.”

Earl said Napier just jumped in and helped keep things at the nursery organized. Braun said she tried to “fill Erik’s shoes as much as she could.”

“She’s just done an exceptional job at keeping us together,” Earl said.

Earl said Napier has always been very self-sufficient.

“She hasn’t really ever asked anybody for help,” she said. “She’s just done everything on her own.”

Even when Napier’s mother died and she was emancipated and took on a mortgage when she was 16, she didn’t ask anyone for help.

“Back then, there was one guy from the food bank who helped me,” Napier said.

She said she told Braun that his help right now means a great deal to her.

“I never would have asked for help in a million years,” she said. “But this has restored my faith in people. There are really good people out there that care, which is cool.”

Looking back, Napier said she has probably had the infection since the summer, when she had some pretty bad back pain and didn’t feel well. But she was staying busy working and didn’t stop to think that something was seriously wrong. And now it’s just a waiting game to try to get the infection under control.

“I’m trying to do the best to be healthy and keep the infection away,” she said. “What was scariest to me is to know that something like that could get so serious so fast. For the first time in my life, I thought I could really die.”

Melgaard said the hard thing about a business like the nursery is that the work is hard, the pay isn’t great and there are no benefits. But Napier loves her work and knows that the nursery is where she needs to be, she said.

“I have such an enormous faith that things work out well,” she said.

A benefit fund has been set up for Napier at Bank of America. Those who wish to contribute can go to any branch and ask to make a contribution to the Cece Napier fund.