Priscilla Ramseur, left, chats with co-worker Vera Tate. Along with five other Duke employees, Ramseur will celebrate her true hire anniversary on Feb. 29. Photo by Bryan Roth.

Durham, NC - Next week, Priscilla Ramseur will celebrate her seventh anniversary of working at Duke.

The only thing is she's worked here for 24 years.

Along with just five others, Ramseur is among six staff members who have their hired date anniversary fall on Feb. 29 - a date that only shows up every four years during a Leap Year. Ramseur started on Monday, Feb. 29, 1988, along with three other current Duke employees. Two current staff members were hired Feb. 29, 2008.

"I used to make jokes about it, that every Leap Year I finally made it one more year at Duke," said Ramseur, associate chief nursing officer for Perioperative Services at Duke Hospital. "Usually I'll declare my anniversary on March 1, but it's exciting to have my real anniversary this year."

Despite its occurrence once every four years, Feb. 29 is just another day to Duke Human Resources. The systems Duke uses to track employee information - like hired start dates - is sophisticated enough to work around the extra day of a Leap Year, said Bill Marchese, business manager for Human Resources.

Mary Jacobs, who also started on Feb. 29, 1988, joked that she's glad every Feb. 29 doesn't count as just one year of service time at Duke.

"When we do service recognition each June, we celebrate everybody's anniversary at the same time so I don't have to worry about only being recognized every four years," said Jacobs, administrative manager and assistant to the dean at the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences.

For Diana Adkins, a senior radiologic technologist with Occupational and Environmental Medicine, each time a Leap Year comes around, it has a different kind of meaning.

"The only reason I think about my anniversary date is because I have a cousin who has a birthday on Leap Years, and I always try to send a birthday card," said Adkins, who started at Duke in 1988. "If someone asks me when I started at Duke, I'll remember."

Ramseur, the associate chief nursing officer, said she hasn't planned anything special for her "true" anniversary date next week and is thankful for having spent almost 25 years at Duke, no matter how you count them.

"Really, it's just another day," she said. "I'm just grateful to have a job and proud it's at Duke."