A maintenance worker at the former Jeannette District Memorial Hospital was confused when he saw Rosemary Kindelan's familiar face in the building on a Friday.
"He threw his hands up in the air and said, 'Don't tell me it's Monday,' " Kindelan recalled.
Kindelan, who turned 99 on Dec. 27, had come to the hospital that day years ago as a patient to get some blood work done.
But, for 42 years, she has more often gone to a hospital to volunteer -- beginning in October 1982 at the Jeannette hospital and, since Feb. 14, 2011, at Westmoreland Hospital in Greensburg. All told, she's logged 10,400 hours as a volunteer between the two hospitals.
For all but the first few years, Monday has been Kindelan's day of the week to volunteer.
Her acquaintance in maintenance "actually started calling me 'Monday,' " she said. "I still see him every once in a while," now at Westmoreland Hospital, part of the regional Independence Health system.
Along with some other workers and volunteers, Kindelan transferred from the Jeannette hospital to the affiliated Westmoreland Hospital when the former closed.
"Two weeks after Jeannette closed, I was working at Westmoreland," she said. "I was just taken in like I had been there forever."
Before she began her longstanding stint as a volunteer, Kindelan was on the payroll at Pittsburgh's Mercy Hospital.
The former Rosemary Weber, a native of Wilkinsburg, graduated in 1946 from Mount Mercy College -- a forerunner of Carlow University -- with a degree in biology and a minor in chemistry.
With that education under her belt, she worked for several years in the Pittsburgh hospital's hematology lab.
"I loved it," she said. "I had worked there as an intern as a technologist in the summer between my junior and senior year, and then I got the job."
A large part of her day was spent looking through a microscope.
"When we did a blood count, we actually counted the cells," she said. "Now, it's all done by machine."
When she married, she moved to Jeannette and raised three children with her husband, Bill, who died in 2011 at 87.
"I started volunteering after my children were raised a little bit," she said. At Jeannette's former Sacred Heart School, she volunteered in the cafeteria and as a third grade teacher's aide.
When her aging mother-in-law spent her last years at her home, Kindelan accompanied her to the Jeannette hospital and decided she would volunteer there someday.
As it turns out, Kindelan became the first volunteer at the hospital's Short Stay Unit. She was the hospital's last volunteer when it closed.
"I would make sure all the things were in the patients' drawers that they needed, and I would make up carts for surgery," she said. "It was a very active department. I didn't want a job where I'd sit and fall asleep."
Most of the time she coordinated her work with the hospital's nurses, helping to prepare patients' charts.
"You get to know the nurses and their families," Kindelan said. "It was interesting."
"One day I patted one of the nurses on the back and said, 'I thought you did a good job.' Most of them were excellent nurses.
"Some of the women whose daughters were in first grade when I started there now are teaching in a grade school or even a principal."
Kindelan's typical shift at the Jeannette hospital began at 8 a.m. and ended at midday. At the time, she lived within a mile of the hospital.
"I enjoyed walking home," she said. "It changes your attitude to be out noticing what people are growing in their planters. It just takes your mind off everything. It's good for your health."
Now she relies on a Westmoreland Transit bus to get from her Greensburg home to Westmoreland Hospital. She noted her arrival time at the hospital varies from 9 to 9:30 a.m. depending on how many other stops the bus driver has to make on a given day. A co-worker gives her a lift home.
Over her years of volunteering, Kindelan has noted the advances in information technology at the local hospitals. "They put more and more things on computers," she said. "I didn't learn about computers, and I probably should have."
So far, the only direct contact she's had with computers is when she logs on and off for her shifts at Westmoreland Hospital.
Donning her blue volunteer's jacket, she spends her Mondays in the hospital's volunteer office with a co-worker who she noted is in the same generation as her six grandchildren. She said the two volunteers complement each other, with her younger colleague handling tasks that are difficult for her now that she copes with arthritis.
"We share whatever we have to do," Kindelan said.
Kindelan's day might include stuffing envelopes for mailings that are sent out to patients, perhaps reminding women it's time for their next mammogram, or compiling packets of paperwork for maternity or gastrointestinal patients.
"There are a lot of different things we make up for all the different departments," she said.
"I try to look at things in a positive way," Kindelan said. "I don't mind working in the office, if that's where I can do the best I can right now.
"I'm able to do it at my age because I'm not out running around."
On her own time, Kindelan is a voracious reader.
"I get tons of mail, and I have to read it all," she said -- whether it's junk mail or news about her 11 great-grandchildren.
Kindelan has benefited from good genes that have produced many long-lived relatives in her mother's family.
Having a good attitude also has helped her to stay healthy and active.
"There are pluses and minuses to everything," she said. "I don't care how good or bad it is. If you try to find the pluses, they will help you. It keeps your spirit elevated."