Officially, Jerry Hampel's job is to keep patients' rooms clean. Unofficially, he often does much more.

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When Jerry Hampel walks into a patient's room at Mayo Clinic, he's there to clean it. Officially, that is.

Unofficially, he often does much more.

That was the case when Hampel walked into a patient's room in the Saint Marys Campus of Mayo Clinic Hospital — Rochester not long ago. "How are you doing today?" Hampel asked as he began his work. Conversation flowed easily from there.

"We talked about a little bit of nothing, a little bit of everything," the patient says.

That talk led to the discovery of a shared connection: The patient and Hampel shared a connection to the same small Southeast Minnesota town. The two discovered that they knew some of the same people and also had a special connection dating back to the 1950s.

"The patient told me the year she graduated, and I told her that's the year I was born," Hampel says.

After Hampel finished his work, he told the patient he'd see her the next day. He couldn't wait to get back.

That's because he planned to bring her a surprise: A copy of her high school yearbook — just one of many he acquired during a stint as a custodian for the local school district.

"They were going to get rid of the yearbooks, and I kept what they were going to throw out," says Hampel, who enjoyed collecting and preserving the mementos.

The next day, Hampel arrived at the patient's room with more than cleaning supplies.

"It made my whole day to see her so happy."

Jerry Hampel

"I couldn't believe the look on her face when I gave it to her," Hampel says. "It made me tearful."

It also made him joyful, as the patient took him on a walk down memory lane.

"'There's my school,' she told me," Hampel says. "'There's my class ring. There's me.' She showed me all the people she knew. It made my whole day to see her so happy. It made my whole 16 years at Mayo."

While the yearbook was a special delivery, it wasn't the first gift Hampel has given to people he's connected with over those 16 years.

"I've given sports T-shirts, or statues or other little things I pick up from the Sisters gift shop," Hampel says. "I enjoy seeing the smiles when I give them to people."

Just as he enjoys the many conversations he's shared. "I can tell if people want to talk, or if they don't," he says.

His words, he hopes, can provide their own type of healing. And they do, according to one patient.

"Jerry brought happiness to me," the patient says.

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