By DEREK HODGES

Staff Writer

SEVIERVILLE — The holidays are a time for family and sometimes it takes no more than that to make someone realize just how much they have to be thankful for.

Shari Chambers, office manager at Mountain Hope Good Shepherd Clinic, knows that’s true. This year she didn’t win the lottery, survive a life-threatening experience or find a copy of the Constitution hidden behind a yard sale painting of a clown. She will, however, have both her sons and her husband home for Thanksgiving and, for her, that’s what truly matters.

“I’m so thankful for my family. The past few years we haven’t usually been able to all be together at the holidays, so this means a lot,” Chambers says. “It’s going to be a wonderful year.”

Not only are both of Chambers’ sons home for the holidays, they’re both safe and sound, living in East Tennessee for the first time in a while. Youngest son Logan has given Chambers and her husband Ted their first grandson, while big brother Travis survived a year living in Baltimore, something Chambers at times wondered if he would do.

“He had a hard time up there,” Chambers says, bluffing a bit on the full extent of the story.

See, not long after he moved to the Maryland city to manage several restaurants there, Travis was mugged.

“Five guys came up and demanded his keys, and he threw the keys in the woods,” Chambers explains. “I guess that made the guys mad because they knocked him down and started beating him. He was in a 4-wheeler accident when he was 18 and he literally broke every bone in his body. He told me when they were beating him he was trying to hide his face in the wheel well so they wouldn’t hit it.”

Thankfully, a resident in the apartment complex Travis was visiting heard the commotion and called the police. He was saved but none of the men have been captured.

That wasn’t the end of the ordeal, though. A few months later Travis was back in Sevier County visiting his family when he got a call from his landlord.

“She told him he needed to come back up there because his apartment had been robbed. And this was in a gated community,” Chambers says. “They took his televisions and a blu-ray player and some other stuff.”

By that time, Chambers was past he point of tolerating the crime wave that targeted her son.

“I told him, ‘Son, get out of there,’” Chambers says. “I felt helpless. It’s the saddest feeling in the world because I thought I should be there taking care of him, but I couldn’t be.”

It seems there may have been a higher power working to keep Travis safe, too. Just a short time after the robbery, he was given the chance to apply for a job managing new Buffalo Wild Wings restaurants to be built in Chattanooga or in Turkey Creek in Knoxville. He was eventually given the post in Knoxville and started making his preparations to move back to East Tennessee.

“The grace of God brought him back here,” Chambers says.

Unfortunately, Travis still hadn’t seen the end of his run-ins with the baddies of Baltimore. On the night before he was to move out of the city, he went out for a farewell party with some friends. That gave a thief the chance to get one last parting shot in.

“He came out and found his car was gone. Someone stole it,” Chambers says.

Now, though, Travis is home and that’s reason for Chambers to be thankful. So, too, is having son Logan and his little boy, 18-month-old Bryson, just down the road.

“Being a mom is my best job, but being a grandma is better,” Chambers jokes. “You get to spoil them and send them home. No, I really do feel like I can fix the little things I would have done differently if I had known about them when I was raising my boys. We love Bryson. When he comes over, his feet never hit the ground. As soon as he’s up on our porch, we’re picking him up.”

Beyond just her family, Chambers says she’s also thankful for Mountain Hope, the low-cost medical clinic where she’s worked for the last two years. The center just celebrated 10 years of helping provide health care for Sevier County residents who don’t have health insurance.

“I’m thankful to be part of such a wonderful clinic because we help our community,” Chambers says. “There’s not one person here, staff or volunteer, who doesn’t want to love and help people. It’s so great to be part of that and I’m thankful for it. I’m thankful for the people I’ve met and the people I work with. They’re the most wonderful people. We have a great group here. It’s like a family.”

dhodges@themountainpress.com