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After retiring from teaching English at Homestead High School, Bill Parkinson could have spent his retirement surrounded by books and may have been quite content. He could have caught up on some reading he’d been long postponing.

However, Parkinson’s wife insisted there was work to be done and people he could help. On her recommendation, Parkinson reluctantly went to Community Memorial Hospital in Menomonee Falls to see what he could do.

Self-mutilation is growing as a problem among young people at an alarming rate. According to a recent large scale survey published in the Pediatrics professional journal, about 17 percent of college students report that they have cut, burned, carved or harmed themselves in other ways.

As he watched the problem become more prevalent among his students, Mark Flottum, coordinator for comprehensive school health programming at the Cooperative Educational Service Agency (CESA) #2 in Milton, sought the professional advice of Thomas Shiltz, a therapist, consultant, author and workshop presenter on mental health at Rogers Memorial Hospital in Oconomowoc.

Mary Conti started out as a licensed nurse practitioner in long-term care in 1976. After five years, she returned to school to become a registered nurse, working in critical care at County Hospital.

In addition to being a registered nurse, she serves as the clinical resource management coordinator at Froedtert Memorial Lutheran Hospital, a role in which she is responsible for finding ways to improve the hospital’s quality of care while lowering costs.

They may have a feeding tube. They may be attached to a machine that breathes for them, unable to communicate. They may be 2 months old or 10 years old.

Regardless of their individual condition, Kathleen Timm is by their side. She has dedicated her heart and love to sick children for 25 years.

Timm has three children who are married and have families of their own. They remind her of how blessed she is.

“I get to come home,” says Timm, who is a private duty nurse for Horizon Home Care & Hospice Inc. in Brown Deer. “The parents are still behind me taking care of that child.”

It’s another cool, crisp autumn morning, and Lori Banker- Horner is up before daybreak. She rises early to prepare herself mentally for the day to come.

She cooks breakfast for her three children, Daniel, Julia and Billy. She smiles at them as she makes French toast – their favorite.

Ring-ring. Banker-Horner knowingly looks toward the phone. It’s time to resume fighting where she left off earlier this morning. She often doesn’t get much sleep. Her job requires her to be on-call 24/7.

Dr. Ian Gilson, a clinical physician, is one of the top AIDS doctors in the Milwaukee area.

Gilson says he learned a valuable listen early on in his practice. One of his first AIDS patients was dying from pneumonia. The patient had previously made it clear that he didn’t want anything done to resuscitate him. He wanted Gilson to let him die.

Dr. Beth Ann Drolet of Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin pioneered a new center to research and develop treatment for a fairly common occurrence in babies that can have a deadly outcome if allowed to grow.

A few months after Kayleigh Ali was born, her mother, Nicole, noticed Kayleigh’s stomach seemed enlarged and felt hard to the touch. Kayleigh’s pediatrician repeatedly assured the family that she was fine.

However, in January 2005, an X-ray revealed that the eight- month- old had tumors on her liver.

The rapidly growing tumors were non-cancerous masses of blood vessels, called hemangiomas.

Dr. Patricia Safavi begins her morning with her own three children before venturing to Next Door Pediatrics to spend the rest of the day with other people’s children. She’s a doctor who is devoted to the simple, but sometimes altruistic notion that everyone who needs health care should receive it, even if they are low in income and have no insurance.

“I got into pediatric care to have an effect on prevention,” Patricia says. “Having families raise their children rather than try to solve problems on the back end from less than-optimal resources.”

Kathy Komas was a teacher, a painter, a volunteer, a writer, a mother, a grandmother and a woman who had a smile that melted her husband Ronald’s heart. Kathy had cancer three times before she passed away in 2002. She was 56 years old.

Her first cancer diagnosis was breast cancer. Kathy had a mastectomy of her left breast and was deemed cancer-free.

One year later, she felt a lump in her neck and shoulder and found out that the cancer had come back. Kathy underwent chemotherapy and radiation.

Lisa Alberte is more than a nurse. She is a case manager, a vocational rehabilitator and she has a dozen certifications – one of which is as a fork lift operator. Lisa provides expert testimony for attorneys, runs her own company and still finds time to raise a family, write a book and decorate cakes.

“A fork lift is no different from driving daddy’s truck or tractor,” says Alberte, who was raised on a farm in Chaseburg, Wis.

She obtained her fork lift certification 12 years ago because a patient had fallen off a fork lift and had suffered a brain injury.