St. Luke’s nurse thriving in ‘second career’ after time in show business performing on big stages

You could say that Keesha Smith traded in her dancing shoes for ones a little more comfortable. And she wouldn’t have it any other way.

Smith – whose maiden name was Olander – left Twin Falls for Los Angeles when she was 16. She had dreams of becoming a dancer and she certainly fulfilled those dreams.

Smith learned hip hop dance, and she worked with some of the biggest names in that arena, including Tyrese, Ginuwine, Ciara, Jason Derulo and many others. See her perform as the middle dancer on The Tonight Show in 2007 with Tyrese and Lil Jon here. It also allowed her to work with an NBA franchise’s dance team.

“The majority of my dancing career I worked with (hip hop) artists,” Smith said. “Then … with the Miami Heat, I didn’t dance for them, I choreographed for them.”

Needless to say, it was a whirlwind lifestyle. She enjoyed it – to an extent. But eventually, she decided it was time for a change for her and her young son, Mekhi.

“The driving force behind me coming back to Idaho was I wanted to transition to a career where he could have some stability,” Smith said. “I also wanted him growing up with his family, his grandparents and his cousins.”

She also wanted to be a role model for her son going forward.

“I really wanted to transition into something where I was walking the walk,” Smith said. “The career I was in was wonderful, but it was very much a self-serving career. There were all these accolades: ‘Look at me, I’m on the stage’ and those kinds of things.”

She thought a return to the Twin Falls area would create a new perspective for her and her son. Little did she know, an appendix surgery would lead her in exactly the direction she had hoped.

“I was deciding what school I was going to go to and what path I was going to take,” Smith said. “I ended up having to have my appendix taken out. I was at the hospital at St. Luke’s, and then I had some post-surgery complications. So, I ended up being there for about a week and the nurses were just phenomenal. Some were single moms themselves, and … I thought, ‘Wow, these women are really incredible.’”

It was a life-changing, career-altering moment.

“I got discharged from the hospital and I went straight to the college and got enrolled,” Smith said. “I just thought, ‘This is it. I want to be a nurse.’

“And I never turned back.”

With the same drive she had when she pursued her dance career, she did the same in the medical field. She earned a nursing degree from the College of Southern Idaho and began working in St. Luke’s Magic Valley’s emergency room.

During that time, she worked side by side with fellow nurse Samantha Gonzalez and the two became friends.

“When I first started working with her, she would still take dancing gigs here and there,” Gonzalez said. “I particularly remember this because it was the funniest thing in the world to me: One weekend she was at the Emmys, then on Monday we were working together in the ER. That was just fascinating to me.”

Gonzalez quickly learned that nursing was a great fit for Smith’s personality, noting “she is probably the most caring human being you will meet in your life.”

Gonzalez likes to tell a story that kind of sums up that statement.

“About four or five years ago, we had a patient who was 15 or 16 years old, and she came in as a trauma,” Gonzalez said. “We had to cut her clothing off. … She told us it was one of her favorite sweaters, but we told her we were sorry, but we had to cut it. Keesha got off work early that day, and she went out and bought a similar sweater for that patient. And then she brought it back for her before she was discharged.”

In early 2024, Smith accepted a job at St. Luke’s Jerome Medical Center as an assistant nurse manager. She oversees about 10 nurses in Jerome while also picking up an occasional shift in the Magic Valley emergency room.

In either role, Gonzalez knows Smith will make an impact on those around her, saying that St. Luke’s is “lucky to have her.”

Still, Smith admits there are times when she misses her life as a dancer, even though nursing does provide its share of excitement.

“Of course, it’s only natural for me to sometimes go, ‘Oh gosh, I wish I was on that stage,’” she said. “I certainly miss that adrenaline rush, that feeling.”

Today, it’s easy for her to look at her current life and appreciate where she’s landed. She married Chad Smith, a special rescue operations team manager and flight paramedic with St. Luke’s, in 2022. The two have an 8-month old daughter who is happy and healthy after some initial complications, and her son, Mekhi, is thriving as a freshman basketball player at Canyon Ridge High School.

Smith’s work with St. Luke’s gives her a sense of purpose, something she was looking for when she returned to Idaho.

“I’m really thankful to have found a second career, because a lot of people aren’t even lucky enough to have one career that they love,” Smith said. “So, I just feel really lucky to have a new chapter that has given me so much purpose.”