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Jersey’s own ‘Captain Tom,’ who has been walking the length of her garden for the past year to fundraise for staff at the hospital, is appealing to islanders for donations as she reaches the final lap of her journey.
Lorna Hopley, finished her mission to walk 1,000 paces a day around her garden, for a year, on Good Friday, having raised over £5,000 to support the General Hospital's staff.
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However, reaching the final stretch of fundraising, 82 year-old Lorna is looking for islanders to help give back to the hospital that treated her when she needed it most, in one last burst of fundraising.
Lorna spent 8 weeks in hospital recovering from an accident that had left her with a hole in her forehead, as well as a broken hip, arm and shoulder.
Reflecting on the journey that has led her to raise thousands for the staff, she remarked on how it started as a light-hearted comment taking inspiration from Captain Sir Tom Moore: “It all began as a joke – I was actually walking around the garden and I said to my friend Teresa, ‘do you think somebody will sponsor me'?"
When Teresa put up a page on Facebook though, and Lorna's daughter and granddaughter set up a JustGiving page, donations and support suddenly started coming in.
Pictured: Lorna wants to see the funds go to help everyone who works at the hospital, from nurses to porters to medical secretaries.
Though Lorna had originally only planned to do the laps around her garden for 5 months, once she had smashed her original target of £500 and raised £3,000, she decided to keep going for the rest of the year, thinking that Christmas and her birthday would provide even more boosts.
However, when the second wave hit and restrictions were put back into place, donations fell due to Lorna not being able to go out and raise awareness of what she was doing – Lorna recalled that a couple of times during this time, she felt “deflated,” but persevered even when the feelings got to her.
“I did miss two occasions when I didn’t feel like walking actually,” she said.
“I got myself so far down I didn’t feel like walking – but then I felt so guilty I had to make up the steps the rest of the week because I’d promised… it’s drilled into me, if you make a promise, you have to keep it!”
Pictured: Lorna has raised over £5,000 for staff at the General Hospital.
With the island now opened back up, and Lorna finally having taken the last step of the journey, she is hoping that it will be a prompt for islanders to give a last flurry of donations to the hospital staff who have been working throughout the pandemic.
“What my daughter’s done, she’s kept the page open for another week after up until the 9th, just in case anything comes in and then we’ll just give the money to the people and the staff,” she said.
On why she has passionately perservered, she returned to the hospital staff who treated and looked after her.
“I have a motto which is - let’s look after those who look after us,” she said. “It’s time to treat them.”
She added that she wanted the fundraiser to recognise all staff at the hospital too as well as doctors and nurses, namechecking the domestics, the laundry cleaners, “porters, medical secretaries, the people who take blood out of you, the radiologists – there’s so many departments!”
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