Our People: Faith, service and finances

Mary Marez is an ordained Baptist minister who converted to Roman Catholicism, but she is also "passionate about photography" and her four children and 10 grandchildren.

She works as a financial counselor for Plains Regional Medical Center, a job for which she said she got her training in the hardest way possible, by harrowing experiences with obtaining medical care for a child born with serious medical conditions.

On a volunteer basis, she also manages a food bank for Sacred Heart Church in Clovis, which serves about 240 people in the community, as well as food delivery to 40 homes where residents are housebound.

She is devout in her faith and expresses it in works.

She sat down with The News on Wednesday. Here are our questions and her responses.

Q. What does your job entail?

A. A financial counselor helps patients with account balances by finding the right programs for them and helping patients apply for them.

Q. What makes this job fulfilling for you?

A. Everything. I 've been blessed in my position by meeting with wonderful people. My story started in 1990 when my third child was born sick. We had to find resources to help with finances. In becoming her advocate and learning about different programs, I learned there is a big need for these services. My experience has helped me –all those years of seeing it from the other side. It gave me the compassion to take this role. I've been doing it for 28 years.

Q. And your daughter. How is she now?

A. She's doing well. She's married with a family.

Q. Your job requires you to deal with people In stressful situations. How do you handle that?

A. I handle it with prayer. I can't do it without the Heavenly Father. I pray and I find answers. If I can't help, I find a way to help. I am able to think outside the box and come up with a solution. I truly believe having that experience with my daughter has really helped. I'll never forget what it was like being on the other side.

Q. Have things gotten better since you took this job?

A. We have more resources than we did in the 1990s. A lot of good things came out of the Affordable Care Act of 2014. New Mexico became an expansion state, so we were able to put more people on Medicaid. That has been a blessing.

Prior to 2014, I used to do applications for the county indigent program. It was limited. We couldn't include prescription drugs. I had been doing that for nine years prior to 2014. Now we have more people on medical insurance. We have the state medical insurance pool and Be Well New Mexico, so we're able to serve more people.

Q. I also understand you are fluent in Spanish.

A. I didn't speak Spanish as a child, but my Mom was born and raised here. When we moved here, people spoke Spanish and I'd ask my mother what they were saying. I didn't learn the language until I was an adult, but I get plenty of practice on the job. I am fluent in Spanish.

Q. What do you do for your church food bank?

A. I'm director of of the food pantry for Sacred Heart Church in Clovis. We are one of largest food pantries in eastern New Mexico. We serve over 240 families a month. I've been seeing the number increase recently. The state is getting on recertifications for Medicaid and the SNAP program (the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program).

After being involved with the food pantry for years as a volunteer, I was asked to become the director in January.

We get some food from the Eastern New Mexico Food Bank, but we do our own shopping with donations.

We're doing pantry this weekend. We're going to be doing Thanksgiving. In obtaining turkeys, S and S. Lowe's and Albertsons have been good to us. Turkeys have gone up to $3.19 a pound. I was pretty shocked.

Q. What motivates you to work with the food bank?

A. I want to give back what was given to me a long time ago. I am passionate about Presbyterian (Health Services). I'm passionate about the United Way. I give dearly to the United Way now. When my daughter needed (a medical device that wasn't covered by insurance), United Way wrote the check without question. Until I was in that position, I had never thought of that before. That's where that came from.

Q. What do you do when you're not working or running the food bank?

A. I spend a lot of time with my family. I crochet, and I'm passionate about photography. I'm ordained, so I do a lot of weddings.

Q. Ordained?

A. I was a Baptist before, and I was ordained a Baptist minister before I became a Catholic. I was allowed to keep my ordained status as a Baptist when I became a Catholic. I grew up with my dad being Baptist and my mother was Catholic. It made for interesting conversations, especially when they disagreed.

Q. What makes you passionate about photography?

A. I took a photography class at Clovis Community College. I had a brand new camera, and the instructor told some of us that our cameras were wrong. He said go a pawn shop and buy a good used camera. I did, and I'm proud of that camera.

The first time I loaded film in a darkroom, they kept knocking on the door and asking, "Are you okay?"

It was funny the first three times, but you get better at it, and we learned how to work to get a good picture We could take all day in the darkroom to get one good picture. It made me appreciate good photography.

I love black-and-white photography. I still do that and I'm still learning.

I love taking a drive and capturing the beauty we're surrounded by. We get so busy sometimes, we fail to enjoy what our Heavenly Father has blessed us with.

Q. Besides the daughter, what other family do you have?

A. I have two sons and two daughters, and 10 grandchildren. And one grand pup. We think it's a pit bull but he's very tiny.

You should have seen us yesterday. We were taking all the turkeys, and my grandson asked, "Can we go and help?" I'm trying to teach them in reference to serving the community and the importance of giving back. I've got amazing little helpers, along with the adult helpers.