Yesterdaywe highlighted the Caskeys who are receiving the Spirit of St. Columbkille Award. The other recipients are Anna Sortino, Mary Pechar and Gina Urbanski for their work with ReRuns.
There is something of Jesus’ multiplication of the loaves in the story of LaVista’s ReRuns R Fun.
Of Christ taking our minimal offering and generously maximizing it, not only for our own benefit, but also for the good and well-being of many others.
Anna Sortino began what became ReRuns in 1997 in the basement of her house as a sort of upscale garage sale. But two years later, just as she prepared for her spring sale, her husband, Mike was diagnosed with leukemia.
Doctors gave Mike little less than a 50-50 chance to survive. A successful entrepreneur, he began selling off his businesses. Anna, meanwhile, turned ReRuns over to St. Columbkille Church.
There was something of a promise in it: “Here you go, God, this is yours now ….. And … please …. heal my husband.”
God did. With treatment, Mike beat back the leukemia and has remained free of it ever since, even running more than two dozen marathons in the last decade.
Anna, meanwhile, took back the reins of ReRuns, establishing it as a nonprofit organization. Now it was God’s, and under his care, says Anna, “we just went boom.”
“We did not start making money until the year we gave it to the church,” she says. “t'was no longer for me. It was to help others because they helped us when we needed it.”
Without God, she adds, “we would have been sunk. I don’t know what I would have done without Him. He has helped ReRuns grow to where it is.”
Today ReRuns is the largest nonprofit children’s consignment sale in the United States, involving more than 400 volunteers, 1,000 consigners, 6,000 shoppers and 70,000 items at its signature spring sale.
It’s also become one of the area’s biggest philanthropic organizations with more than $1 million in goods and donations benefiting St. Columbkille Church and School, the Omaha Food Pantry, Sienna Francis House, the Smile Train and many others.
For the past decade, Anna has been assisted by the loyal friendship of fellow St. Columbkille parishioners Mary Pechar and Gina Urbanski. During ReRuns’ seven-month selling season the trio volunteers 60 to 80 hours a week, coordinating volunteers, cataloguing merchandise, producing various communications, maintaining a Web site, managing a database of 15,000 customers and coordinating their extensive donations. Often, their husbands and children are helping alongside them.
Reruns has become their life.
“I absolutely love it, eat it, breath it,” says Mary. “It’s like watching your children grow. ReRuns is a miracle in itself.”
You might here the same thing said in Honduras, where ReRuns proceeds have helped build a home for orphans and the elderly. A few years ago Anna, Gina and Mary visited Honduras to see their impact firsthand.
“I get such a rush knowing that our hard work generates the means to help make a difference in so many people's lives,” says Gina.
That includes lives right here at St. Columbkille. ReRuns has had a deep and widespread impact at our parish and school, purchasing classroom projectors and screens, white boards, and library shelves for the school and security cameras for the church. They’ve also helped fund playground renovation, tuition and school fee assistance, an 8th grade scholarship, the YNIA mission trip, our chapel/crucifix fund, Thanksgiving meals and much more.
“We have been beyond blessed,” Anna says. “We keep working for the Lord and I keep thinking if we keep doing the right things and helping others, everything else just falls into place.”
