Check please

Anyone who has dropped by the Coeur d'Alene Denny's in the last few decades knows Shirley Prosch is the kind of waitress they want serving their table.

The plucky, tiny-framed woman instantly recognizes regulars, their faces shuffled away in her mental catalogue of favorite orders and inside jokes. She asks after customers' families, she remembers where they work. If someone has an idiosyncratic order they always defer to - egg whites only, no cheese, fruit instead of hash browns - she can recite it like rote.

Shirley might not be a doctor, but no one can say she hasn't spent her career changing lives.

Because since the 68-year-old first donned her apron at the Coeur d'Alene Denny's in 1973, she has made everyone who crosses into her syrup-perfumed turf feel like the most special person in her world.

"As they come in the restaurant, you pretend like it's your home and they are your guests," Shirley said on her last day on Wednesday, as she choked back tears. "That's how you take care of them. You pretend like this is your home."

Shirley was finally giving her ankles a rest, retiring after 40 years of sashaying from table to table, hefting laden trays from the steaming kitchen.

Not to mention, enduring the strenuous commute from her home next door, across the restaurant parking lot.

Roughly 30 regulars, friends and coworkers converged at Denny's on Wednesday to celebrate the end of Shirley's last shift at 2 p.m.

True to form, the bird-like blonde was working up to the final minute, grabbing coffee, leaning toward customers to hear their orders, moving deftly on a fuel all her own.

"Five, four, three, two, one!" everyone in the restaurant shouted during her last seconds on the clock.

"This is so good. My God," Shirley said, hustling to distribute hugs. "I didn't know that this many people liked me."

It was just time to retire, Shirley said, and join the coveted crowd who ambles into Denny's just to kick back.

"The responsibility's gone," she said of retiring with a grin. "I don't have to pour coffee, I don't have to get orders, I don't have to make change, I don't have to bus tables."

Shirley has become a fixture of the restaurant, especially as she and her husband, John, have neighbored the restaurant nearly their entire 50 years of marriage.

In her '73 job application, Shirley penned "walk across the parking lot" on the line asking how she would get to work.

"They were in my backyard. I figured, 'How convenient,'" she said of why she applied.

Coworkers and customers on Wednesday waxed praise of Shirley's relentless cheer, her bottomless energy. She has always looked after customers, and coworkers too, they said, like bringing coffee to a cook when his truck broke down.

"She comes in early in the mornings, and helps me if I'm behind," said coworker Carla Leach. "She's so caring."

Regular Dan Cooley has been drinking coffee at Denny's about as long as Shirley has been pouring it.

She has always kept an eye out for his truck, he said, and brought him banana bread from her house, whether she was working or not.

"She's a special friend," Cooley said, adding that she has never let his coffee reach the halfway mark. "I hate to see her go."

Tina Newman said she often headed to Denny's and chatted up Shirley after getting off a graveyard shift.

"She'd be happy, chipper as could be, always concerned about customers," the Hayden woman said. "We'd always talk. I shared a lot of things, a lot of personal things."

Shirley said she stuck with Denny's through the decades because of the fantastic management.

Her managers have cleaned her mouse traps, given her kids lunch money when she forgot, driven her to the bank when the roads were snowy, she said.

"They are always looking out for you," Shirley said, tears threatening again.

She has loved her work, she said. Constantly moving, Shirley has prided herself on memorizing if customers were right handed or left handed, how they liked their coffee, their steak, their eggs.

"Just waiting on them for 40 years," she summed up.

The customers have gotten bigger over the years, she conceded in a low voice. But they have remained ever loyal and trusting.

"People in North Idaho are really neat," she said. "They're kind, considerate. They leave their purses and keys at the table when they go to the bathroom, for God's sake."

She learned her work ethic from her mother, she added, who Shirley remembers toiling on their farm in Ekalaka, Mont., from "morning to night."

Did Shirley ever dream of more than serving people meals?

Never, she said. It's all she has ever done, starting back when she was 15.

"I never wanted to do anything else," she said.

Manager Rick Jost described Shirley as, "one of the most truly sincere women" he has ever known.

Shirley said her immediate plans are to bring banana bread to her former coworkers, and enjoy time with her husband and her six grandchildren.

She only had one special demand, she informed her manager, her index finger held resolutely in front of her face.

"I want my 20 percent discount until I die," she said. "That's my retirement package."