When Jerry Wirth ’88 was inducted into the College of Business Hall of Fame at Illinois State University’s 2004 Homecoming, he had no idea the connection he made that weekend with fellow alum Mike Richard ’75 would turn into a project that would help children around the world.
At the time, Richard was treasurer of the McDonald’s Corporation and of Ronald McDonald House Charities (RMHC), a nonprofit organization that works to improve the health and well-being of children and their families. At that time, Wirth was interested in starting a charity with the American ambassador to Latvia, where Wirth has lived and worked for years. The two Redbirds put their brains together, and the idea of Ronald McDonald House Charities Latvia was born.
“I talked with Mike about getting support from Ronald McDonald House Charities, and he kindly sent a team of people to Latvia to look at the need and to understand the community and the country better,” Wirth said. “Latvia is a very small country, and it seemed like the best way forward was to align with a charity with an excellent reputation and to have a good friend in the U.S. to help us along the way. From his side, I believe it was the strength of our ISU connection that made him a believer. It has proven to be a very good collaborative effort.”
—Jerry Wirth
It’s a more dangerous mission, but it is also more urgently needed, and it is literally saving lives.
After Wirth founded the charity, the Latvian Ronald McDonald Care Mobile, a semitruck custom-built into a mobile clinic, was launched in 2010, and since then has traveled across the country with doctors from the state children’s hospital delivering diagnostic care on demand. Wirth currently has contracts with over 25 doctors who specialize in different areas of medical care. When a community has children who need medical attention, the doctors travel with the Care Mobile to perform the necessary diagnostics for free.
“We have a simple mission to improve the health and well-being of Latvia’s children,” Wirth said. “We address the problem of access to health care by delivering the health care directly to the children.”
Since Wirth and Richard first spoke in 2004, the charity has grown, and the medical truck now treats over 5,000 Latvian children every year.
“This is ongoing. We are now close to 60,000 Latvian children treated and enjoy the support of rural communities, doctors, the Ministry of Health, and the Latvian public,” Wirth said. “It demonstrates that Mike Richard, the charity in Chicago, and their faith in us was well-founded and that our performance is best in class.
“This little startup charity has become an institution that is well recognized in Latvia for providing basic, diagnostic health care on a large scale. From a business perspective, the best-in-class performance includes operations, management, and governance and is the key that unlocks corporate donor funding for our work.”
Jerry Wirth ’88 with the medical truck in Przemysl, Poland.
The medical truck in position at a train station where Ukrainian refugees pass through en route to Poland.
The Latvian Ronald McDonald Care Mobile.
While the charity has thrived in Latvia, its neighbor is fighting for survival. When Ukraine was invaded by Russia, Wirth saw an opportunity to use a similar mobile medical care truck to help Ukrainian refugees. After acquiring a truck that was no longer in use from a partner charity in Germany, Wirth drove the truck to Poland’s border with Ukraine, filled it with medical supplies, and trained Polish paramedics how to use it. He and his colleagues then entered Ukraine, where they set up the truck near the border to treat refugees as they fled the country.
“After a bombing, there would be thousands of refugees pooling near the border, where they would have to wait to get into Poland,” Wirth said. “With these thousands of people under tremendous stress, inevitably, there was going to be health problems, but there was no medical care available. So, the Polish paramedic team with the truck from Latvia was treating anyone and everyone from elderly grandmothers to infants.”
Wirth and the team soon realized that a mobile medical truck was not necessary for this particular work since refugees were traveling to a fixed point to meet the truck. So, they moved the first aid service inside the train station at the border, leaving the medical care truck available for other work in Ukraine.
Wirth then contacted the founder of the Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS), an organization that provides the first point of care to victims of war and natural disasters, to find a use for the truck within Ukraine. An agreement was signed to turn the truck into a mini field hospital within the country.
“It has changed entirely from being the place where refugees get treatment to now, heading to the East of Ukraine, where the fighting is, and it is extracting civilian casualties from bombings and resuscitating, stabilizing them, in order to transfer patients to a hospital away from the fighting,” Wirth said. “It’s a more dangerous mission, but it is also more urgently needed, and it is literally saving lives.”
The mobile medical truck operated for a time in Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv where the first mass graves of civilians were discovered. Wirth said the work to assist Ukrainian refugees came about as people in Latvia and other surrounding countries were doing their part to help.
“We have this fantastic truck, a very supportive board, and wonderful partners in Ukraine. It’s a bit like fate,” Wirth said. “We just took advantage of the opportunity to do something good once we saw it.”
The charity remains active in Latvia and in Ukraine. The medical truck has now treated over 17,000 Ukrainians, with that number growing by over 100 per day, Wirth said.
Wirth and Latvian colleagues with a four-generation Ukrainian family they delivered from Ukraine to Latvia.
“We are now mostly away from the front line and are directed by the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, which uses our truck as an adjunct clinic to replace those that have been destroyed and targeted specifically by Russia,” he said. “Russia has targeted and destroyed over 400 Ukrainian medical facilities—which have zero military value.”
What started out as a conversation with a fellow alum at Redbird Homecoming has grown into a project that has saved the lives of both Latvian children and Ukrainian refugees.
“The most personally rewarding thing I’ve done, apart from having a family, is to be actively involved in the work of this charity,” Wirth said. “My work here makes me feel that I am doing my part to improve my community. Happily, I’ve also found that doing charity work does not mean you’re sacrificing something professionally. Actually, it can mean the opposite, as the adage goes: ‘To do well by doing good.’”
Wirth said that the more publicity this effort receives, then all the better for Ukraine.
“Ukraine’s struggle is felt by us in Latvia as an existential one,” Wirth said. “We have similar histories, and unfortunately, similar experiences with Russia as a belligerent neighbor. It’s easy to forget that this is the biggest war in Europe since WWII, and it will continue for some time. Should Russia succeed, I’m afraid we will see escalation. So it must be stopped.”
John Moody contributed to this report.
