Georgie Peters mans the telephone switchboard and offers a smile to anyone walking past the reception desk.

Chris Wong, an executive assistant, notices an infant seated on the lap of her uncle, goes to her office and returns with a star sticker that she places on the wrist of the 5-month-old girl, drawing a precious smile from a new friend.

The lobby is bustling with activity but no one is too busy to offer a cheerful greeting to passing coworkers or visitors. What makes this cheerful setting unusual is that it is in a hospital lobby.

Peters says it's like this every day at Wahiawa General Hospital, not only during the holiday season.

"Patients who have to come here are ill and stressed so we try to pass on smiles to them," said Peters, who joined the Wahiawa General staff 10 years ago. "(The hospital) has received a lot of compliments about our attitude."

John "Jack" Julius, Wahiawa General's chief executive officer since August 2004, learned at a recent staff party that his hospital staff is really an 'ohana. "There are generations of people from families working here providing services to friends and neighbors," Julius said. They include husbands and wives, mothers and daughters, sisters and cousins.

It's like a plantation, said Jean Look, the hospital's assistant director of nursing who commutes from Kailua to Wahiawa daily.

"It's all about the people," Look said. "People who work here want to work here and we're all trying to make it work.

"There's nursing shortages all over the island," she added. "I think you don't have the buy-in that employees who want to be here have when you bring in people from the Mainland on contracts. Fortunately, we have enough staff who live here to carry us."

The best example of the hospital's bonding with the community is the work of its auxiliary, a group of 35 volunteers who operate the gift and thrift shops daily but also do annual fundraising projects.

For the past 49 years, the first week of November around Wahiawa town is noted for the hospital's "County Christmas" bazaar.

Donations from the auxiliary the past two years, totaling $114,000, were used in 2005 to buy new cardiopulmonary equipment and seven crash-code carts with automated external defibrillators.

The crash carts have replaced top-heavy carts that took two people to push, said Look.

In describing the additions of a diagnostic Philips Zymed Holter Monitor, which tracks heartissue symptoms without keeping patients in the hospital, and the Censor Medex V-max, used to diagnose lung diseases, Look said the hospital has moved from having "a Ford to a new Jaguar."

Three people in particular are committed to giving back something to the hospital: Martha Peterson, president of the Wahiawa General Hospital Auxiliary; Emma Tom, business manager of the hospital's gift shop and a volunteer for more than 25 years; and Mona Matsui, a retired schoolteacher who runs the gift shop and is a prime mover for the "County Christmas" event.

"This is our hospital, all my children (now in their 40s) were born there," said Peterson. "My husband (Alan Peterson) is on the hospital's board, my father was on the board ... so we want it to do well."

Martha Peterson also remembers fondly the late Kay Kimoto, a nurse who was in the delivery room for the birth of all four of her children and whom she later served with as an auxiliary volunteer.

Tom recalled that her late brother-in-law, Ralph Olson, served as the secretary for the committee that pushed for the building of the hospital and that her youngest daughter, Barbara, was born at the old wooden Wahiawa Hospital. "It's a community hospital, where everyone knows everyone," Tom said.

Matsui gave birth to her youngest daughter, Becky, at Wahiawa General and decided to become a volunteer 16 years ago to give something back to the community. "This hospital," Matsui said, "is the center of the community."

Matsui stages five jewelry sales a year in addition to pushing for donations in the community for "Country Christmas," which is noted for its quilts, collectibles, baked goods and china.

"Nothing is commercial; everything is handmade," Tom said of the items sold.

Hospital staff and friends in the community donate bake goods and other items.

Martha Peterson recalled "County Christmas" started when no one was doing Christmas craft fairs. "The first one was at Leilehua High School in the cafeteria," she said.

The contributions and participation from the community enhances the prevailing 'ohana attitude that exists among staffers.

"I'd do anything for them," Wong said after agreeing to write and send out thank-you notes from the auxiliary to "Country Christmas" contributors. "It's because they care about what we're doing."

Reach Rod Ohira at rohira@honoluluadvertiser.com.