We were lucky to catch up with Katie Rimel recently and have shared our conversation below.

Katie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

My son was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes in 2009 at age 10. About a year later I was introduced to Camp Possibilities a camp specific for Type 1 children. Problem was the cost at the time was over $1200.00 for five nights. I told the person that introduced us to the camp that there was no way we could afford the cost of camp. Her response was to hold a fundraiser. Our goal was to raise enough to cover our son and the first year we raised enough money to send not only our son but 2 other campers. I knew if this was a struggle for our family, we could not be the only ones. We held a spaghetti dinner, and a ticket drop auction. That was 14 years ago.

Over the years we have helps countless children get to Camp Possibilities. I was once told that there were kids at camp that never would have been able to get there without our fundraising. In 2020 we officially became Eastern Shore T1 Diabetic Support Foundation. Our motto is “No one fights T1D alone” We connect newly diagnosed families with local families to help them on this journey. We hold several events a year to bring families together. Some of these events are free and some have a fee involved. We have since added a high school scholarship program for local young adults continuing their education either at college or trade school. In four years, we have awarded $20,000 in scholarships.
This year we are sending 10 kids to camp. We have not determined our scholarships yet as the applications are not due until next month.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My husband of 29 years and I own an accounting firm. I decided to go back to college at age 50 because I could not do half the work in the office to help him. The one thing that was constant in our lives the last 15 years was raising our son that was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 10. And raising money for local families to help get their children to Camp Possibilities and bringing local families together. Type 1 diabetes is a lifelong uncurable disease. If you do not see an insulin pump or a continuous glucose monitor, you may never know the child if front of you is a Type 1 Diabetic.

For Easten Shore T1 Diabetic Support Foundation, I am most proud of my board of directors. I might be the name or face people think of, but there is no way I could do all that we do without their support and dedication. We work together as a team and each member has brought an individual strength to the team to make us successful. This will be our fifth-year awarding scholarships. My next big goal is to add an advocacy team to help parent’s when they run into problems with our school systems. This sadly is a major issue just not here on the eastern shore of MD but across the world.

Personally, I am most proud that on May 14, 2025, I will be graduating from Wor-Wic Community College with an associate’s degree in business management and a Payroll Specialist Certificate. I will be graduating with honors as a member of both Phi Theta Kappa (National Honor Society for 2-year schools) and Alpha Betta Gamma (National Honor Society for Business Majors.) Also graduating Debt free thankfully due to scholarships.

How’d you meet your business partner?

I actually met my husband who is also my business partner when I was a senior in high school in 1990. We met when I went to York College of Pennsylvania on my freshman orientation. He was a sophomore at the time. We became instant friends sharing many common interests. We both worked on the Yearbook and sang in multiple choirs on campus. We were best friends but never dated until we both had left York College. When we started dating, we actually only dated 3 weeks before we got engaged. The only person that was surprised by this was us. Our friends, parents and even the Catholic Priest from our campus all said. “IT WAS ABOUT TIME.”

Today as business partners we feel our success is that as a small business we want our clients to feel like we are part of their team. We live in a small community. We do not want our clients to feel like they can’t speak to us when they see us in the community

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Business:
During COVID we had no choice but to stay open as we were considered an essential business. Right after the world went into shut down, we basically put all of our tax clients on hold while we assisted all of business and payroll clients while we assisted them in preparing documents for all the new PPP (Payroll Protection Program) loans to assist the business to survive. We had always had an open-door policy with our clients. We instituted a appointment schedule so we could effectively take care of our clients while maintaining social distancing.

Eastern Shore T1 Diabetic Support Foundation:
COVID shut down the world on March 18th, 2020, this was 10 days from our next Spaghetti Dinner and Basket ticket drop. The baskets were prepared and ready for the event. We had to follow guidelines and cancel the dinner. We contacted a company that specialized in online fundraising and held our Ticket Drop online that year. The follow 2 years we still had to worry about social distancing so instead of having a dinner in person we worked with a local diner to do a carry out dinner. We lined their dining room with our baskets people came dropped their tickets, picked up their dinner to take home. We called winners to arrange pick up.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://WWW.EST1D.ORG
• Facebook: Eastern Shore T1 Diabetic Support Foundation

Image Credits

not applicable all pictures were taken by myself or with my phone