MD Anderson shuttle driver spreads happiness everyday

Fairy Shelvin has been driving the skybridge shuttle between the Main Building and Mays Clinic since 2005. You'd probably recognize her, she’s the driver with a ready smile and a bald head. She shaved her head to support her sister who was diagnosed with lung cancer. Shelvin smiles and cries at the same time when she talks about the sister who could always make her laugh but died of lung cancer last spring. “I told her, ‘I just want you to know I love you, and I’ll be there for you,’” Shelvin says. “We hugged and cried. And we hugged and cried some more.” She has no plans to grow her hair back. “My sister passed with a bald head, so I plan to go out that way, too,” she says. “It’s from my heart, so I’m all the way in, 100%.” The perspective Shelvin gained at her sister’s bedside has added a new layer of meaning to the work she does every day. Shelvin says she tries to smile all the time because she knows patients are watching. “If I can put a smile on one patient’s face, I’ve done my job that day.”