Page 6 - RVO What Women Want Nov2016

6VV • What Women Want • An Advertising Supplement to the River Valley & Ozark Edition of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette • Sunday, November 20, 2016
EILISH PALMER/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER Erica Cason of Conway, who was born with a mild form of spina bifida, is a physical therapist at the Conway Regional Therapy Center-Scherman Heights location. The 30-year-old married
mother of two also founded the GO Store, which sells discounted items for Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes.
Hands-on MINISTRY
GO Store is passion of Conway physical therapist
BY TAMMY KEITH SPECIAL SECTIONS WRITER
Erica Cason of Conway has two ministries, and she uses her hands for both. In her career as a physical therapist, her touch is healing. In her work for Operation Christmas Child, her hands fill shoeboxes to send to needy children all over
the world.
The 30-year-old mother of two is juggling both roles
as the holiday approaches. “I love the idea of helping peo- ple,” she said, sitting in her office at the Conway Regional Therapy Center.
Cason’s love of Operation Christmas Child, which sends gifts to children in more than 100 countries, led her to open the GO Store last year in The Ministry Center, 766 Harkrider St, in Conway. She shops for deals and bargains on bulk items that are then sold at discounted prices at the GO Store to people who want to pack shoeboxes.
“What’s on my heart is to spread the Gospel in remote vil- lages, and this is the way [God] has told me to do that,” she said.
The Operation Christmas Child collection started last Monday and will end this Monday. The GO Store will be open from 9-11 a.m. Monday for last-minute shoppers.
Cason is a year-round community-relations volunteer for Samaritan’s Purse, the nondenominational Christian relief organization that administers Operation Christmas Child, as well as many other programs.
The Harrison native started donating to Operation Christmas Child through a Bible-study group at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. Cason, who de- scribes herself as “real nerdy,” graduated with a degree in pre-med/kinesiology.
She was a Bodenhamer Fellow at the University of Arkansas, which is an Honors College leadership-oriented fellowship.
“I liked the college already, but that kind of sealed the deal,” she said. “It allowed me to study abroad in Costa Rica for a summer, as well as study in a western-European tour another summer.”
Cason and her husband, Andy, got married her junior year of college, and she decided to go a route that would be more flexible when they started a family.
She went to physical-therapy school at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway and received her doctorate in 2011. She’s worked for five years for Therapy and Rehab Solutions, which staffs Conway Regional Health System therapy positions.
“I love the relationship aspect of my job, being able to love on people and get to know them. I get to minister to them physically, emotionally,” she said. “I love to be able to use my hands to feel a huge difference in their muscle tone, or help their pain or range of motion. It’s such a rewarding thing.”
Cason can relate to the pain some of her clients experi- ence. She was born with spina bifida occulta, a malformation in the vertebrae.
“My lower back is congenitally deformed; I’ve had a lot of back pain,” she said. One of her legs is an inch longer the other. “That’s why I’m wearing this disco shoe,” she said with a laugh, referring to a tennis shoe with a thick sole.
At some point, she’ll have to have surgery to fuse the vertebrae, she said. For now, she exercises and wears the shoe lift.