Mario

When I first went to work for Verizon Wireless 12 years ago, it was a small organization in Pittsburgh. In fact, it was then called Bell Atlantic Nynex Mobile. Shortly thereafter, we dropped the Nynex. Customer Service had a total of about 35 representatives that took incoming calls. My job was, and still is, to some degree, to schedule the reps. Because we were small, we were like a family. My own extended family has over 30 people that get together for the holidays, so, not much different. To schedule them, we would walk around with pencil and paper and they would sign their name by the schedule they wanted to work. Because there were few of them and my department consisted of only me and my jobshare partner, we got to know everyone well. If they were out sick on the day we did a schedule bid, we knew them well enough to say "this is what shift they would want." To say the wireless industry has exploded in the past 12 yrs would not be an overstatement. Bell Atlantic became Verizon probably 8 years ago (that's a guess) and we began hiring a lot more people. With that came the introduction of scheduling software that made my job in some ways easier and some ways harder. One class we hired had 100 new hires in it. Talk about growth! To train them, 50 of them worked 6-2:30, and 50 of them worked 2:30-11. We now schedule close to 800 people.
About ten years ago, when we were still relatively small, a character came to work with us by the name of Mario. Mario had red hair, freckles, and wasn't a small guy. He was in is mid twenties and had a lot of ambition. The company's training department was growing and evolving, and Mario jumped on the opportunity to leave customer service and become a trainer. On his first trip away to train employees in Harrisburg, he brought back a huge chocolate bar from Hershey for my jobshare partner and me. He obviously knew me well to know chocolate would be a hit!
About 3 years into his stint with the company, Mario started dating one of the girls in the office. We watched their courtship with glee, as any woman knows how much you love to see an eligible and deserving bachelor "get the girl". Jen had been married before and had a daughter. When Mario and Jen got married, I attended their wedding in Wexford and cried tears of joy. Mario adopted Jen's daughter as his own.
Yesterday when I went to work I found out that Mario had been in Dublin, Ohio, leading a new training class in that area. When he did not show up to train on Tuesday, they went to his hotel and found him dead in his hotel room. He died of a massive heart attack. Mario was 35 years old.
We are all devastated and stunned in the office. It points out once again how short and fragile life is.
I am not sure where Mario's heart was. We had a few generic conversations about faith. He was a wonderful guy. But did he know Jesus? I don't know.
Please pray for Jen and her daughter. And may this be a lesson for me to be more aggressive in sharing the good news of Jesus Christ.