Cafeteria Angel Answers Sick Children's Christmas Prayers

Jessie Tendayi, a cafeteria employee at Advocate Trinity Hospital, visited the Oak Lawn and Park Ridge campuses on Monday handing out toys. | Advocate Children’s Hospital

OAK LAWN, IL -- For the past seven years a hospital cafeteria worker has taken what she needs to survive from her modest paychecks and put the rest of her income toward buying toys for children she does not know.

Zimbabwe-born Jessie Tendayi, who immigrated to the United States 19 years ago, was inspired by a TV newscast of a children’s hospital at Christmas.

“God put it in my heart that I should be taking care of those children,” Jessie said, a cafeteria employee at Advocate Trinity Hospital on Chicago’s South Side. “I didn’t know what to do, but God gave me an idea and then I thought about giving them toys so that they can have something to feel better. Their problems are heavy.”

On Monday, Jessie made her annual visit to distribute toys and spread joy to the young patients at Advocate Children’s Hospitals in Oak Lawn and Park Ridge.

When Jessie first started her mission several years ago, Jessie purchased most of the toys from her South Side neighborhood Walgreen’s store. In recent years she’s expanded her enterprise to any big box store offering a sale.

“Jessie is such a wonderful person who has always been so selfless,” said Michelle Gaskill-Hames, president of Advocate Trinity Hospital president. “You can tell that she looks forward to this time every year. The fact that she takes money from each paycheck from the beginning of the year just to make children happy at the end of the year makes her a remarkable woman. We love Jessie and we know the children are excited to see her every year.”

Jessie shyly admits to spending $4,000 to $5,000 out of her own pocket on toys. Jessie doesn’t give a child just one toy, she gives them an armload.

“This is something I love doing every year and it keeps getting bigger and bigger,” Jessie said.

Worried parents lose their furrowed brows when they see the smiles on their sick boys’ and girls’ faces when presented with a new train set or electronic keyboard.

“You like your toys,” she asks the children, bandaged and tethered to IVs. “Have fun playing.”

Bringing toys to children when they’re not expecting anything else but pain that day gives her joy.

“When I give them toys I want them to see God, not me,” Jessie says. “I want them to know that it doesn’t matter if you work in the kitchen or the dish room. No matter how small your paycheck is, you can make a difference.”

Where there is hope, there’s Jessie Tendayi.