THE HELPER By Susan Barth
Cory Sonnemann makes you want to step up and volunteer—even though it’s quickly apparent that it would be difficult to do as much as he does. Cory (Chemistry ’10) is a psychiatrist who works at the Montana State prison and Southwest Community Health, a foster dad, and one of the most decent human beings you’ll ever meet. He’s also working hard to found a southwest Montana chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). He finds a way to help wherever he is, however he can. Cory grew up in Billings, the only child of a pharmacist and a retail counselor. In high school he didn’t have any particular idea what he wanted to do, but he knew he wanted to play football in college. His choice was to walk on at MSU or U of M, or play at Montana Tech with a football scholarship…which sounded a lot better. He decided to major in Petroleum Engineering. After a year he realized neither football nor Petroleum Engineering was for him. Fortunately he connected with a mentor, Dr. Marisa Pedulla, who gave him the opportunity to participate in research
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projects in microbiology, and encouraged him to present at national conferences. Cory credits Dr. Pedulla with putting him on the path to medical school. The other major influence during Cory’s Tech career was Big Brothers Big Sisters. Cory volunteered as a Big Brother to a 12-year-old Butte boy named Dylan. “It’s a unique situation,” Cory said, “but he lived with me and my roommate for a while, while I was going to Tech. Then I ended up taking him to medical school with me. I was a single dad in medical school.” That’s right: Cory not only took in his little brother, but when he moved to Yakima, Washington to start medical school at Pacific Northwest University, he took the boy with him (with his family’s permission). “I did my full 10 hour day or whatever it was while he went to high school,” Cory said. “Then after school, he’d come back to medical school and wait for me to be done. Then we’d go back to our one-bedroom basement apartment in Yakima. We did that for two years. He was a successful baseball player there. And then when we came back to Montana, he felt comfortable moving back with his mom. It was fun. He’s all grown up now, and doing good. And it shaped the way I wanted to do things, how I want to influence communities for the better.”
