Article February 25, 2002 Issue

Rebekah Rushing's faith and fundraising

Former Enron employee helps others mend.

Julie Mahler Sentinel staff

IT'S A STORY OF HOW a simple act of sisterly kindness was impelled and magnified by a power not her own. When Rebekah Rushing, a former Enron employee, opened an account for the Enron Ex-Employee Relief Fund at her bank in Humble, (near Houston) Texas, all Rushing could afford to contribute was $90.00. That, and her willingness to answer phone calls about the fund. The phone didn't exactly ring off the hook right away.But now, things are different. Now she's fielding calls from the media, from contributors, and from Enron survivors who, especially at the end of January, were desperate for help with their rent and utility bills.

In the morality play that the Enron story has become, Rebekah Rushing is one of the cast's shining lights. Hired the day after her layoff, by a startup energy exploration company, she wasn't satisfied with reveling in her own job-hunting success. Sure, she was covered. But in a recent telephone interview Rushing told me that, with the thousands of Enron layoffs, I knew there were people who needed assistance, really didn't know where to go, because nobody would answer their questions. My goal was to pull a hundred, or a couple hundred people together, and to try to make a little bit of difference."

An unexpected $68,857 contribution from Sen. Charles Schumer of New York—the amount Enron had contributed to his campaign found—opened the gates. Since then, according to a February 1 Houston Chronicle report, Rushing's fund has received a total of $160,000 and has handed out $100,000.

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