By W Kemp

As children and even as adults we enjoy sitting back and letting our minds wonder to a wonderful fantasy world filled with wishes and dreams. As adults, we sometime want to be the whimsical Fairy Godmother or Godfather or maybe even Gilda the Good Witch from the Wizard of Oz granting wishes and making dreams come true.

I have to commend the work that Dennis Sampier from the Detroit Pistons and his community relations team for putting together the Make-A-Wish telethon in about 45 days. It started with a call asking me if we were in…can we (Quicken Loans) make wishes come true for two wonderful little girls who were dreaming of going to Quicken Loans with their families. How could I say no?

By C Linder

This past weekend I had the pleasure of volunteering my time with my fellow Quicken Loans/Rock Financial/Title Source team members at the Cranbrook Institute of Science in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. The event was the Maple Fest which was a two-day kids event put on by the center, and is run primarily by volunteers. Sometimes it is so easy to get caught up in the demands of everyday life and it feels great to volunteer your time to help others in need to bring you back down to earth. This is what I was seeking through this opportunity- and it also helped that I am a complete science nerd.

I was somewhat disappointed that it happened to be yet another freezing, windy, snowy day in Michigan because some of the kids were going to go outside to participate in activities- and I unfortunately was missing gloves and a hat. This prevented me from being able to volunteer outside, which was my original plan. I thought it was inspiring, however, that they still took groups of kids outside to learn about making maple syrup and tapping it from the trees.

My Quicken Loans corporate email greeted me with an invitation to an event – the annual Keith Hamm Foundation fund raiser. Do you know Keith Hamm? I don’t. But, I know Mark Miller, the person who sent the email, and so I read on.

It’s so easy at this point, when reading any email, work or home, to simply delete it and move on. But, I’d like to challenge you to ask a few questions: Who is Keith Hamm? Why is he important? Who is Mark Miller? Why is he doing this? If you take the time to get the story, you just might find a connection. And that connection may surprise you!