Making A Difference: An Occasional Series Profiling North Idaho’S Community Leaders Devoted To The Cause Sandy Mamola Spends Her Life Helping The Less Fortunate

It started with an arrest in 1961.

Sandy Mamola, 15, was incensed that a Long Beach, Calif., store had fired a black woman for reportedly racist reasons. Mamola picketed with 30 people.

The protest was non-violent. She was charged with civil disobedience.

Her values next motivated her to depart from her church.

Her Baptist minister asked a visiting black minister to leave during a service. Mamola left, too, and never returned.

“My father’s best friend was black. I’d lived in Panama and Puerto Rico,” she says. “I don’t remember ever being a person who didn’t care about other people.”

The spark that ignited Mamola’s first stands against injustice has grown into a blazing torch that lights the way for Coeur d’Alene’s poor.

Now 53, Mamola runs the area’s oldest weekly soup kitchen and directs the Panhandle’s only health center for the needy, the Dirne Community Health Clinic.

“She has great respect for the individual person, no matter how poor they are ,” says Lidwin Dirne, who started the clinic with Mamola’s help.

“She has a love for people and she has great faith. That is her strength.”

Mamola’s no bleeding heart. She’s frank to the brink of rudeness. She’s not afraid to point out holes in the stories people tell to win low-cost health care.

She expects volunteers to honor their commitment as if it were a job. She demands professionalism and courtesy, and asks those who can’t muster either to leave.

“Dignity is something we all deserve,” she says. “If you treat people with dignity, you’ll receive it back.”

She also laughs, so wholeheartedly that her head flies backward and her eyes crinkle into slits.

“She can be difficult. She can be easy. One thing for certain, she is real. You know where she stands,” says Skip Frazier, a mental health counselor who’s volunteered at the clinic for five years. “Consequently, it’s a joy to work with her. She’s very inspiring.”

Mamola’s acceptance of people began young. Her father was in the U.S. Air Force. Living among different races in other parts of the world was the only life she knew.

Her management skills also were honed young. She was the oldest of eight children.

Her idealism blossomed along with the nation’s. At civil rights battles and crusades to eradicate poverty she found kindred spirits and an audience for her frustration over society’s imbalances.

Passion pushed her, but Mamola stayed grounded. She belonged to Stokely Carmichael’s Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee for a few years. When Carmichael’s rhetoric grew violent toward whites, she quit.

Pregnancy and marriage pulled her from the protest scene in 1965. She was 18, inexperienced and in love with surfer Gary Mamola. Her friends were taking off for Europe, college, protest marches.

“I was home in California raising children,” she says. “I think I was always an old woman.”

Motherhood captivated her. She helped in her kids’ classrooms, joined the PTA.

She didn’t attend church, but her faith didn’t fade. By 1975, she decided her children, Jeff and Nicole, needed a church. Gary was Catholic. Mamola studied to become Catholic.

“That was where I fit,” she says. “The heart and soul of that church is the laity, and that’s where I find my strength.”

She and Gary led Marriage Encounter, a faith-guided program to strengthen relationships.

“Gary and I were a good team before. After, we became `one,”’ she says. “We’re still opposite personalities, but we see things the same way, even after 34 years.”

Southern California’s bustle finally drove the Mamolas north. When they settled in Hayden in 1981, work was scarce. Their new church in Coeur d’Alene, St. Pius X, helped them survive.

Dirne spotted Mamola’s spark in church. She invited Mamola to join a new group hoping to offer medical care to the Panhandle’s poor.

The project took six years to organize, but Mamola stuck with Dirne for every step. Lake City Health Care, a low-cost clinic for the poor, opened in 1989.

“Waiting frustrated me,” Mamola says. “But I see now that if we’d jumped in, the clinic might not be here today.”

The clinic was a tribute to cooperation. Kootenai County and local organizations gave money. Kootenai Medical Center contributed supplies, expertise and, eventually, a permanent site. Panhandle Health District provided a site for the first eight years.

“You can accomplish anything in this town if you bring in the right people,” Mamola says.

Volunteers, from doctors to nurses to office workers, gave the clinic life.

“Not too many other communities have had such success,” says Marla Lewis, who directs Kootenai County’s community welfare program. “The clinic saves the county money.”

The year before the clinic opened, Mamola persuaded St. Pius’ council to allow her to feed the area’s poor.

Her mother had begun a soup kitchen in Costa Mesa, Calif. Mamola visited her in 1988 and discovered a huge soup pot in her car’s back seat on the trip home.

“I’d said more people ought to do what she was doing,” Mamola says. “She basically told me to quit talking and do something.”

St. Pius allowed Mamola to cook and serve at the church. She contributed beef she and Gary raised, and vegetables from her garden. Parishioners donated money.

The soup kitchen has served dinner to 40 to 75 people every Friday for 11 years.

“Sandy’s devoted to the cause,” Lewis says. “She won’t give up if she knows something’s right.”

The soup kitchen remained simple, but the clinic consumed Mamola’s life. She wanted it to last and that demanded credibility.

At her suggestion, the clinic began screening patients for their financial condition. The few people who could afford a visit to a doctor were asked to leave.

“I know there are a few bad apples out there,” she says. “I’ve made a commitment to the county, hospital, doctors and volunteers that the people we’re serving are truly in need. Bottom line is: I am the gatekeeper.”

The clinic treats about 3,900 patients a year. At Mamola’s insistence, it also charges patients a small fee - $5 to $20, based on income.

“I think it’s wrong to give someone something over and over and never hold them accountable,” she says.

Last year, she succeeded in renaming the clinic for Dirne, whom she calls her mentor.

She also felt her community’s gratitude last year. Within a few months, Gary crashed his bike and broke his pelvis. Mamola underwent a lumpectomy for breast cancer, and their son was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Cards, food, money and good wishes flooded their home.

“That whole year reinforced how damn lucky we are,” she says. “What if we had no one?”

This sidebar appeared with the story: INFORMATION Clinic hours The Dirne Community Health Clinic, 1111 Ironwood Dr., is open Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Patients should arrive by 5:30 p.m. The clinic also is open Wednesday mornings by appointment only. For information, call 765-1667.