Cindy McAdoo has kept Muskogee Cooperative Ministries’ financial records for seven years and has Christmas shopped for needy children for more years than that.

And, even after receiving the MCM Volunteer of the Year award Monday night, McAdoo says she still has more work to do for the interfaith ministry.

McAdoo, a social worker with Muskogee Regional Rehab Center, was presented a trophy at the 30th annual MCM gathering Monday. MCM is an interfaith ministry that oversees such programs as the Muskogee Food Pantry, Meals on Wheels, Infant Supply Closet and Weather Coalition.

The Rev. Barbara Brown, departing president of MCM, called McAdoo “the glue that holds this agency together.”

She said McAdoo has drawn upon her background in social services to “meet the needs of the community.”

McAdoo said the ministry “means a lot to me.”

“It means a lot to know people who have needs are seeing their needs met,” she said. “Muskogee Cooperative Ministries and the Ministerial Alliance were instrumental in helping the Hurricane Katrina evacuees.”

She said MCM is “a special organization that lets people work together across denominational lines.”

“Just think of the ministries started by MCM,” she said. “We started Meals on Wheels, we had the first hospice, we started CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates). We look at unmet needs and try to meet them.”

McAdoo is finishing three years as MCM treasurer and was treasurer for four years during the 1990s. She said she plans to stay on the MCM board as the program’s historian.

Such dedication fit the gathering’s theme, “One More.” Placards on the tables called for “One More Driver” for Meals on Wheels, “One More Diaper” for the Infant Supply Closet, “One More Gift” for the Christmas Shop.

Departing Muskogee Mayor Wren Stratton, the gathering’s keynote speaker, called on MCM volunteers and supporters to keep taking advantage of opportunities to help the community.

“If you want to know what’s going to change in this community, look in the mirror,” Stratton said. “Your gift to Muskogee, through your churches, through your acts, through your contributions gives us one more opportunity to do just that.”

Stratton, who leaves office later this month after the May 13 mayoral run-off, said that although the city charter describes the mayor’s job as symbolic, “the city expects much more of the mayor than just symbolic acts.”

“I signed the largest deal in the history of this community” with the Capella lease agreement for Muskogee Regional Medical Center, she said. “That was not a symbolic act. Working through the ice storm of 2007 was not a symbolic act. Do we really deserve a 19-year-old as mayor if it weren’t really a symbolic act?”