When Ellen Brooks retired in 1977 at the age of 34 from her job as a production assistant on the Warner Bros. lot, she was looking forward to spending some time traveling the country with her new husband, Dr. Philip Brooks, a gynecologist approaching his 50th anniversary at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Dr. Brooks was preparing to take some advanced classes and attend seminars around the United States, and Ellen wanted to spend that time with him.
Shortly after she left Warner Bros., Ellen went with Philip to an OB-GYN dinner and was sitting at a table with a handful of gynecologists and their wives when she told the woman sitting next to her about her decision to retire. That short conversation, as it happens, changed the next four decades of Ellen’s life.
“ ‘She said, ‘You retired? OK, you’re going to come and work at Cedars,’ ” as Brooks remembers the conversation. “I said, ‘Maybe someday.’ She said, ‘No, you’re going to come and work. I said, ‘OK, we’ll see.’ ”
The next day, Brooks received a call from the president of Helping Hand of Los Angeles, a Cedars-Sinai support group founded in 1929 that has helped raise more than $20 million for the hospital’s Obstetrics and Gynecology Department, which has allowed the department to endow two chairs and establish an ovarian cancer detection program.
The president asked Brooks if she would be willing to sign up as a volunteer. The commitment was not too big — four hours one day per week. She figured it was a nice thing to do and, anyway, her husband was already working at Cedars-Sinai. So she enrolled in training with the volunteer services department and began working at the Helping Hand gift shop, which, like its parent support group, donates all its proceeds to support obstetrics and gynecology at the medical center.
Now, 38 years later, every week (and almost always multiple times a week), Brooks is at the hospital to help patients and their loved ones who wander into the gift shop, or she’s at the hospital because she’s now the president of Helping Hand of Los Angeles (a position she assumed three years ago), or she’s at the hospital because, well, she loves to help people who maybe just can’t find where they’re going in the massive complex.
“When I come here every week, it’s like coming home,” said Brooks, who came into the gift shop on a Friday just for this interview, but still took some time to do her (volunteer) job — offering comfort to people with whom she crossed paths.
“What’s very rewarding is, just now, while I was waiting, I said to a woman, ‘Can I help you?’ And she said, ‘No, no, I’m just waiting; I have somebody in surgery.’ And so we started talking.”
The gift shop and the lobby (which are adjacent) are filled every day with friends, relatives and patients who, for example, are recuperating from surgery and may venture into the gift shop if only to get out of their room for a few minutes. Brooks uses those few minutes to infuse a bit of warmth or simply some basic human interaction that can go a long way in any hospital, for any patient.
“When people are anxious and nervous about their loved ones who are in surgery or upstairs in a room,” Brooks continued, “they need to just get a breath of fresh air and walk out. They wander into the gift shop and we provide comfort for them by making them feel they can take their mind off the worries that they have.
“Something makes you decide you want to do it [volunteer],” Brooks said. “In my case, I didn’t have anybody that was sick, but I always knew that when I had time I wanted to do volunteer work.
“It makes me feel good to help people who, many times, are in a very stressful place,” Brooks said. “Every aspect of it has enriched my life.”
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