Employees Donate Vacation Time So Co-Worker Can Care For Cancer-Stricken Wife
CAMARILLO (CBSLA.com) — Employees at a company headquartered in Camarillo have joined together to help a co-worker care for his cancer-stricken wife.
Spring Xu's 43-year-old wife was diagnosed with late stage colon cancer seven months ago.
Xu, who works at Vitesse Semiconductor Corp., has used all of his paid time off to help care for her and their three children.
"My wife right now is everything, and now I have to take care of my wife," he said.
CBS2's Amy Johnson reports that the company created a new policy for Xu, allowing employees to donate their vacation time to him.
"Any one of us could be in that situation, so here's a guy, his wife is very sick, he's got three kids, and he needs to spend time and you know, I've got vacation. I think it's kinda a simple thing to do," co-worker Phil Richards said.
"He will make better use of it than I would," co-worker Rahul Mehrotra said. "It was the right thing to do. It could have been me on the other side."
The policy allows for 12 weeks of donated time off and the donations came right away.
"In the first hour of me sending the email out to all of our employees in the United States, we had achieved half of the hours," HR manager Ronda Grech said.
When the employees reached the maximum hours they could give to Xu, they decided they wanted to give even more.
"There are a group of colleagues that are very close to Spring, his immediate team, if you will…who have come together to take cash donations, to cook meals, to go grocery shopping, to buy his children Christmas presents," Grech said.
"I cannot ask for a better Christmas gift," Xu said. "My colleagues, my friends, the company…I cannot think of anything better than this support."
Xu's wife has undergone chemotherapy and will have surgery soon. Xu says he'll be there throughout the whole process.
