Cops, kids, cakes and kidneys

• Leigh Cumiskey

justine wettschreck/Daily Globe Leigh Cumiskey, who left South Korea in 1984 to marry her American fiancé, has been the cake decorator at Worthington’s Hy-Vee for six years.

Talk about it

WORTHINGTON — Upon arriving in the United States, Leigh Cumiskey didn’t speak English. Her husband-to-be didn’t speak much Korean, but he could read and write it a bit.

Somehow, the two of them made it work.

Leigh grew up in Seoul, South Korea, and through a friend was introduced to Mike Cumiskey after moving to the U.S.

“He saw a picture of me and liked it,” Leigh said with a laugh. “He wrote me a couple of letters, then he came to see me. As soon as he saw me, we got engaged, and we were married six months later.”

Stationed in Okinawa, Japan, Mike was just finishing his enlistment with the U.S. Marine Corps. In March 1984, Mike and Leigh met in Los Angeles, Calif., and moved to Winona. It was a bit of a shock to Leigh.

“It was cold and snowing,” she said. “I had no idea America was such a cold place!”

Upon arriving in Winona, they moved in with Mike’s parents.

“We were so poor,” Leigh said with a laugh. “He was working as a bartender and going to school full-time, I was a dishwasher.”

After getting his certification, Mike became a peace officer with the Winona Police Department. He eventually took the position as the Public Safety Director in Worthington.

The Cumiskey family moved from Winona to Worthington in 1999 when Mike was named police chief.

“I didn’t see or meet prejudiced people,” Leigh said. “Bosses saw that I was a hard worker, and everyone was nice.”

When she first left Korea, Leigh said she would see people everywhere that reminded her of family members.

“I kept thinking I was seeing them,” she admitted. “My mind would play tricks on me.”

Between the change in climate, the language barriers and even different food, Leigh had a lot to adjust — plus she missed her family. Her mother had raised Leigh and her brother on her own, and by the time Mike met Leigh, her brother had already married and was a father to several children.

“My mother was shocked at who I married, and my brother really liked Mike right away,” Leigh said.

Leigh’s brother was killed in a construction accident the year after Mike and Leigh got married. Several years later, his three children were abandoned by their mother and left with their grandmother.

When Leigh and Mike went to Korea in 1994, they saw what a hard time Leigh’s mother was having. So they made a life-changing decision — they decided to adopt the three children and raise them as their own.

“Poor Shannon,” Leigh said of her daughter. “She was an only child and spoiled, then all of a sudden she has three siblings who had left everything they knew. They had to learn English, and there were some hard times.”

Shannon was 9 years old when Jilliana, 14, Ceili, 13, and Graeme, 11, came to live with them in 1996. The adoption process was complicated because their mother was still alive. Leigh and Mike worked with a Korean adoption agency to expedite the process, but according to Mike, everything almost came to an end when the agency wanted $10,000 per child to complete paperwork. With the help of the Minnesota Children’s Home Society, they were able to get the agency to accept $12,000 for all three children.

Going from a family of three to a family of six kept things at the Cumiskey household hopping, especially after Leigh was diagnosed with a kidney disease in 1998.

“I had a biopsy done, and was told that Oriental women have a hard time finding a kidney donor,” Leigh said. “By 2001 it was getting pretty bad. I had 60 percent kidney function and was working at County Market.”

Her doctors told her it could take as long as six years to find a kidney because of her blood type and heritage. By then, the Cumiskey family was living in Worthington and had joined a local church.

“We got a lot of support from the congregation,” Leigh said. “People I barely knew were offering to donate a kidney.”

Mike was tested and deemed unsuitable as a donor, but then Mike’s sister was tested and declared a match.

“I did three month of dialysis, then Sally was matched,” Leigh explained. “I had the transplant July 18, 2001, and it worked wonderfully.”

Several years later, County Market closed its doors in Worthington, and Leigh started working as a cake decorator for Hy-Vee. She has been with the company for six years.

All four of the Cumiskey children have since graduated from Worthington High School, and only Graeme still lives at home. Where there was once chaos, there is now relative quiet, Leigh laughed. The hardest part about it is trying to cook in smaller quantities, she claimed.

After 28 years in the United States, Leigh said she really doesn’t consider herself anything but American.

“I don’t feel Korean anymore,” she admitted.

Readers may reach Daily Globe reporter Justine Wettschreck at

376-7322.

Tags: leigh cumiskey, south korea, our diverse community, news