Reflecting upon my family's recent ordeal with the clarity that only circumspection can bring, I realized that there is one in particular; among the many helpful persons whom we had the pleasure to meet; that easily captures the focus for acclaim, even in the midst of such excellent competition. While each person on staff provided succor in their turn as my family trudged through this most recent nadiral gauntlet, it is one Sarah Robertson, that I wish to distinguish to you.

I look at the delineated criteria you say that I should judge her performance by and to me it seems to be wholly inadequate. Like asking an astrophysicist to use only twine to measure the vast distances between celestial bodies. Sarah did all of the things on this list, but not that only, she did them with such ardor and alacrity that it now serves as the impetus for the epistle I now indite. What I offer are just the choicest examples that affected me personally.

On the sixth of August my mother had a stroke. This is a devastating event for any family to be certain but for us doubly so since it was also just three days before her sixty-eighth birthday. With everything going on this fact more or less slipped my mind, after all in such dire circumstances you can imagine the miasma of melancholy that pervaded the air. Generally speaking we aren't big on birthdays, but when the next one is almost stolen from someone you love, any new day becomes a gift incomparable. But when Sarah discovered, on her own, that it was her birthday she drafted some nearby colleagues and proceeded to serenade my mother with such a convivial chorus of "Happy Birthday" that, if it had been divorced from the situation's context, you would have sworn we were surrounded by the most ancient of friends. It may be a small thing and most probably would not have been aware enough to do it, but it brought a smile to my mother's face when smiles were in short supply and it meant the world to me.

Then of course there were the multitudinous times during what was obviously a very busy schedule that she would entertain my unlearned questions with studious interest and with the patience of ten saints attempt to distillate medical jargon into something more human friendly.

These and many other similar acts of charity were to my mother, my family and me more salubrious and efficacious than any pharmaceutical or treatment ever could be. It would be easy to fill reams of paper with mellifluous praise concerning Sarah's ministrations to us. For me these things are enough to recommend her for any recognition that you may bestow. I trust her influence on us shines through my baroque ramblings which hopefully convey to you my belief that she embodies the essence of what the "DAISY" award stands for and why it was created.