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Organ Lady™ Story
Dr. Batara, the original "organ guy", a local Washington doctor, brought a couple of sets of lungs to a middle school in the 1960s. One was healthy and the other belonged to a smoker. He did not tell the kids what to do. He just held up the lungs and gave them the real inside story. Kathy Ketchum, the original "organ lady", was a young student at Lake Stevens Middle School and had been spending some of her free time out behind the school smoking. Because she saw the lungs, Kathy quit smoking, became a nurse, and started her own organ program for youth in schools at Providence Regional Medical Center Everett in 1989.
Colleen Williams flunked out of high school in 1971, started college at 33 years
old and became a psychiatric nurse in 1991. She worked for many years with kids on in-patient psychiatric units. She began to realize that her patients had numerous reasons for being on her unit, involving life choices they had made, and wanted to catch the kids young, before they got in to trouble. She didn’t know what to do. Colleen met Rebecca Rose and Kathy in 2000. By then, Colleen was the Health Promotion Coordinator at Naval Station
Everett and had the "organ ladies" coming out to the base and on to ships to teach military members. Kathy’s program at the hospital was serving mainly Snohomish County.
Colleen, Kathy, and Marylou Hoidal, Colleen's mother, all worked together from January 1, 2004 until June 2010, when Kathy left Choice & Consequence to work in another program for
Providence Regional Medical Center. Colleen and Marylou
(Booma) continue their work with CC and are grateful for the experiences of working with Kathy & Rebecca on this important program.
Biography- Marylou Hoidal
Marylou Hoidal was born July 2, 1930 and graduated from the Marysville High School class of 1948. She worked for the Marysville globe, was a checker for the old B & M grocery store, and worked for the Volunteers of America until she retired. Married in 1951, Marylou raised five children and divorced in 1983. She has 10 grandchildren and 5 great grandchildren. “Raising children was a most gratifying project, followed only by working with Choice & Consequence as an assistant to my daughter". Retirement has not slowed her down. This former Strawberry Festival Queen travels as an assistant to Colleen Williams and loves working with young people.
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Colleen grew up in Edmonds, Washington, attending both Edmonds Junior and Senior High Schools. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Nursing at the
University of Alaska, Anchorage in 1991, exactly 20 years after she flunked out of Edmonds High School. Low self-esteem coupled with drug and alcohol abuse led to some difficult times in her teen life. She got word that she had passed her nurse's licensing examination the day before she flew to attend her 20 year Edmonds High School reunion! At 42 years old, when most people were retiring from the military, Colleen was sworn in to the United States Air Force. She served her four years as a psychiatric nurse at Wilford Hall Medical Center at Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas. Her last year in service was spent earning her Master of Science in Community Health
Administration and Health Promotion. She held National Board Certification as a Psychiatric/Mental Health Nurse for 10 years and is certified as a Health Promotion Director by the Cooper Institute of Dallas, TX. Colleen returned to live in the Seattle area in 1999. She worked as the Health Promotion Coordinator for Naval Station Everett until quitting to found this organization after she was diagnosed with lung disease in October of 2002. She started smoking in the 5th grade and quit in 1995. She serves as the Executive Director for Choice & Consequence™, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation and a TRIS & BB presenter.
A dynamic speaker, Colleen’s own first hand experiences as both a child of a parent with alcoholism and depression and her own battles with youthful
substance abuse and depression put audiences directly in the experience of trying to build back a life after these troubles. Her ability to weave scientific and anecdotal examples into her presentation will keep you on the edge of your seat and leave you standing in the sunlight of optimism and hope her life represents today. Colleen has a husband, four children and three grandchildren along with a host of other family members that live in the area. A belief in appropriately using her past experiences to help individuals illustrates the 'silver lining in every cloud' theme reflected in the company logo she created.
Colleen is a member of the American Nurses Association, Washington State Nurses Association, nursing’s honor society Sigma Theta Tau International,
Sigma Theta Tau- Psi-at-Large, Association of Advanced Practice Psychiatric Nurses, and the American Psychiatric Nursing Association. She will graduate from the University of Washington's Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner (PMHNP) program on June 8, 2011. She will continue her work with Choice & Consequence while attending school.
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