Tributes paid to Star's Mina

Mina Sharp, from Hollinswood, Telford, was one of our original Star Direct Managers, responsible for organising deliveries of hundreds of copies of the paper throughout various parts of Telford.

Andy Bate, circulation operations manager, said: "Mina was a member of the Shropshire Star canvass team back in the 1990s and worked for many years in that role gaining many orders.

"Mina was then one of the original Star Direct Managers recruited when she started providing the delivery service in Hollinswood, where she lived.

"Obviously this made Mina a local celebrity as the face of the Shropshire Star, going above and beyond for Shropshire Star readers. Over time the area she covered expanded to Hadley, Horsehay, Dawley and Sutton Hill."

Despite receiving treatment after a return of her breast cancer, she carried on.

"In fact Mina was still relaying messages to us from her hospital bed the day before she passed away."

Her partner Andrew Thomas said: "She was just a wonderful, outgoing person. She was just brilliant and all the customers loved her. Before working at the Shropshire Star she child-minded for quite a few years and I have had quite a few of the children who she looked after who are now grown up who have come over and passed on their condolences and cards.

"Two years ago she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She fought it and got over it, and then just recently she had to go back in hospital as the cancer had come back, and this time she didn't make it. She passed away at the Princess Royal Hospital."

Mina is survived by Andrew, children Laura Sharp, David Thomas, Lesleyanne Francis, and Christina Thomas, and four grandchildren.

The family is asking for donations, not flowers, to the Jayne Sargent Foundation. The funeral is at Emstrey crematorium, Shrewsbury, on April 3 at 9.15am.