Gary Mobbs: We're all volunteers

A pancake feed held 29 years ago to help Gary Mobbs' family deal with the financial fallout of caring for a seriously ill child has grown into a holiday machine of eating and giving.

Shalena's Breakfast with Santa, an annual event named after the Hauser Lake Fire captain's little girl who lost a battle with cancer, is expected to draw 1,600 people to the Hauser Lake Fire Station, 10728 N. Hauser Lake Road, today.

Each year, the breakfast raises several thousand dollars for a child with a serious, sometimes terminal, illness.

For Mobbs, the holiday benefit is an extension of the selflessness that guides Hauser Lake's volunteer firefighters all the time.

"There's a quote from (General James) Doolittle, 'There's nothing stronger than the heart of a volunteer,'" Mobbs said. "We're all volunteers."

Mobbs, who has been with Hauser Lake Fire for 37 years, said he appreciates everyone at the fire department, and is proud to be associated with them.

"Truly, these guys and gals are stand-up people," Mobbs said. "We volunteer for fire, we volunteer for rescue, we volunteer for our trainings."

Mobbs said he just completed a week of dive training with the sheriff's department, and he took a week of vacation time to do it.

"We all do that," he said.

The all-you-can-eat breakfast of sausage, eggs, pancakes, biscuits and gravy still costs a suggested donation of $3 - the same amount requested when the breakfast got its start in 1985. It will take place from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m.

How did the breakfast get its start?

The first year, people saw how much everything cost us. In travel, to Deaconess all the time. My brother was in the fire department at that time, and they decided to do a fundraiser. It wasn't a breakfast for Santa Claus, it was just a fundraiser. A lot of the fire departments came over, and picked up breakfast. Maybe about 100 people came, maybe a little more than that.

So the next year came along, and I thought, what a great thing that was. I talked to the guys in the fire department, and I said, 'What do you guys think of all of us doing a breakfast for a child that has cancer?' They said that would be great. Then one of the guys said, 'Why don't we name it after Shalena?' At that point, Shalena had passed away. Obviously, that's a big honor for me, to have it named after Shalena.

We proceeded to borrow a grill here, borrow a grill there. We borrowed tables and chairs from Post Falls Fire Department.

Through the years, we've been able to buy our own gear. We now own all of our own grills, tables and chairs and coffee makers.

Can you tell us a little about Shalena?

She had blonde hair, blue eyes. She was an angel. And she was really smart, really intelligent. Of course, all parents say that, but she really was. At 2 years old she was speaking in full sentences and she actually knew - she was diagnosed right before she was 2 - she actually knew a lot of what was going on. She was pretty sharp.

Did you ever think the breakfast would still be going, 29 years later?

No, because it takes a lot of energy and dedication for people to do something like this. Usually, you'll get maybe five years out of something, and then people will say 'Oh no, this is too much work, we don't want to do this.'

But I head it up, with Lisa Wendle. She's the president of our auxiliary. Together, we head this whole thing up, as far as all the prepping goes, getting things ready. I can't say enough about Lisa, really. She does a lot.

How have things changed since that first breakfast?

Well, there was one grill that everything was cooked on, and a lot of the stuff, like the sausage, was pre-cooked ahead of time. Now, we have the spices.

We have a retired firefighter from Germany, and his family has a meat packaging place in Germany, and we get the spices from Germany every year. We still don't know what they are. The spices go to Super 1, and there will be 400 pounds of sausage that we have made up for us.

Now for the grills, we have three grills doing eggs, three grills doing pancakes, three grills doing sausage. That's nine grills we have running. Then we have a couple of waffle makers that we have in the back room. Same thing with the gravy. It's made in the back room in a great big, huge kettle.

It's something to see, really. It takes a lot of organization to do this, and discipline too, because the guys can't be running around doing their own thing.

We actually use it as a training, because we run the incident command structure, like we would on a fire. People have to report to certain people, and you don't walk away from your job without reporting to that person.

Have there been other changes?

We had three bays at that time in our fire station, now we have nine bays. The fire district has expanded so much that now we can seat a couple hundred people at one time. We've been serving around 1,500 people for breakfast the past few years.

Can you tell us about some of the children and families the breakfast has supported through the years?

One year, we were sponsoring a family from Lewiston, and my wife said, 'Why don't we have the family come stay with us?' And I said, 'No, no, no.' I said, 'Rule No. 1, I can't get close to the family, because if their child passes away, I've got to relive all of that, and I don't want to.'

So a month later, guess who came and stayed with us? The family came. The child's name is Brittany. She's actually graduating from college too, now. Brittany really touches my heart. We've been involved with their family and been down to Lewiston a few times.

But I try not to allow that to happen. Even though Shalena passed away 29 years ago, it can still be just like it was yesterday. There was something on the radio, for the give-a-wish program or something like that. They said, 'Can you imagine what it's like to have the doctor say your child has cancer?'

I was driving a car, and tears just rolled up in my eyes.

Man, that just struck a nerve.

Roughly how much money has the breakfast raised each year in recent years?

The breakfast will cost us around $3,000 to put on. Now that we've gotten so big, we pay for most of the food. We used have a lot of it donated. We'll typically write a check for anywhere from $4,000 to $6,000, or we pay hospital bills.

When it does happen each year, does it feel good to watch the breakfast unfold?

It's emotional too, at times. You know, you look at where we came from and where we are now. The emotional part is when you see the kids come in who we sponsored in past years. Unfortunately, not all of them make it. We have kids we sponsored 20-something years ago. That's really cool. Last year, one of the kids we sponsored graduated from nursing school at NIC ... When we get to see these kids come back through, it gives us a warm feeling knowing that we've helped all these families. Because it's not just me. It's all of us at the fire department. I'm just one piece of the puzzle.

Shalena's Breakfast with Santa

- Today: Hauser Lake Fire Station, 10728 N. Hauser Lake Road

- Food: All-you-can-eat breakfast of sausage, eggs, pancakes, biscuits and gravy

- Cost: $3 donation

- Time: 7 a.m. to 1 p.m.