PLYMOUTH, Wis. — Sarah Smith doesn’t like to sit still.
She runs her furniture restoration business, WaldoMidCentury out of the Plymouth area.
"I was someone who worked 70 to 90 hours a week,” she said. “I was very used to a ‘go, go, go’ mentality. I ran off of it.”
Her background is in design and Do-It-Yourself (DIY) projects.
"I've always been the Jane of all trades.”
For nearly a decade, she’s taken old, run-down pieces of furniture and strips, sands, and stains or paints them.
Smith takes custom orders or resells her favorites on her Instagram page.
The colorful ones hold a special place in her heart.
She aims to breathe new life into the furniture, but now her community is breathing new life into her.
"Multiple scans later, I have metastatic stage 4 cancer,” Smith said. She found out just before Thanksgiving.
One of the first things she said to her oncologist was: “How quickly am I going to lose feeling in my hands? How long is it going to be before I can't hold my spray gun anymore to put lacquer on things? How long before I can't sand things?
That fast-paced lifestyle changed drastically when Smith started chemotherapy.
She told me she had to cut back on hours and let go of her one long-time employee.
"I've only been able to be in the shop maybe an hour, hour-and-a-half at any given time,” she noted. "I think our business is down probably 60 to 70 percent."
To support Smith through treatment, her family started a GoFundMe.
"I didn't feel like it was something I could ask for. So knowing that it's there, knowing that I have this fallback has taken away some of that urgency of hustle.”
The community raised almost $10,000 in less than a week.
"It's been really humbling to see the list of names and, likewise, the list of people that just left things anonymously,” she smiled. “Because even when you don't feel like your contribution of $5 to somebody's GoFundMe isn't helping, that is not the case. It's absolutely helping."
Smith says although hearing the big C word is scary, this journey has helped her fall in love with her job all over again.
I asked her how she’s stayed so positive.
"You're planning for the worst and hoping for the best. But once you plan for the worst, I've just put those things out of my mind and we're just doing the best parts now…because that's the only part that I can change."
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