http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2009/04/21/save_nancys.ART_ART_04-21-09_B1_S0DK824.html?sid=101
The lunchtime crowd gathers at Nancy's Home Cooking in Clintonville, where owner Cindy King faces bankruptcy and $59,000 in medical bills. The special yesterday was chicken and noodles, which tempted even a longtime vegetarian.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009 3:05 AM
By Ann Fisher
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
When a 26-year-old information-technology recruiter opened a Facebook page to raise money for the owner of soon-to-close Nancy's Home Cooking, he figured he'd attract 1,000 members, tops.
Instead, more than 2,640 devotees had joined the page -- Save Nancy's Home Cooking!!! -- by last night.
Conor Malloy said he hopes the high turnout on Facebook, an online social-networking site, will be reflected Sunday at the Clintonville restaurant.
He has asked Nancy's fans to overpay their bills that day to help owner Cindy King as she faces bankruptcy, $59,000 in medical bills and disabling illnesses.
The restaurant won't reopen after May 31, but Malloy asked fellow patrons to help out King anyway. She bought the business at 3133 N. High Street in 1970.
The higher-than-expected turnout on the Facebook page has inspired Malloy to rethink his assumptions about the popular eatery.
He grew up visiting Nancy's with his father, Michael, who first visited the restaurant with his own father. Conor Malloy said he figured that most longtime fans are too old to know or care about Facebook.
Maybe his father had a hand in that. The Columbus police officer said he hasn't visited the page and doesn't intend to. "I'm using the computer too much at work already."
Perhaps Conor Malloy envisioned someone like Chuck McKenzie, who has been a Nancy's regular since he moved to the neighborhood some 30 years ago. McKenzie said he will celebrate his upcoming retirement at a shooting range, where he intends to finish off his keyboard and monitor.
McKenzie knows there's an effort afoot to raise money for King, but he didn't hear about it on Facebook. "You gotta be kidding," he said yesterday while he waited for his cheeseburger at Nancy's.
Or maybe Malloy pictured someone like King herself, a 60-year-old who said she had barely heard of Facebook before Malloy told her about his online campaign. "I don't know anything about 'Facebook this' or 'tweety that,' " she said in reference to Twitter, another Internet networking tool. "I hear the word mouse, and I'm calling an exterminator."
King said she appreciates the kindness, however, adding that she's "overwhelmed by the attention" and struggling to accept it. She said she doesn't know how much money has been raised.
When Malloy set up the Facebook page, he probably pictured someone like Dereck Baxter, a 26-year-old Internet sales representative who heard about the Sunday fundraiser after a friend directed him to the site.
Yesterday, he broke an eight-year stretch as a vegetarian to sample the chicken-and-noodles dish he often enjoyed during lunch break as a Whetstone High School student.
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