Commitment to serving seniors unites diverse volunteer corps

Published 1:30 am Friday, December 15, 2017

Homage Senior Services volunteers come from many walks of life.

Take Laura Nathan, who’s tended the front desk at Homage three days a week for nearly a year.

In her 50s and with a master’s degree in microbiology, Nathan moved with her husband some 25 years ago from Malaysia to Michigan. She worked in a medical lab while her husband was employed in the auto industry, she said. Now he works for Boeing, and Nathan is happy volunteering.

“You don’t have to be out there making grand gestures,” she said, to make a difference in people’s lives.

She volunteers elsewhere, but said she finds working with seniors especially meaningful.

“I have lost my parents not too long ago and I never got the chance to care for them,” she said.

Eighty-five-year-old Mary Ann Hollenhorst volunteers as a senior peer counselor and counts herself lucky to be in good health. Many of her clients are not, she said.

“We all have losses,” she said. “And especially persons who are older have gone through a lot of losses. It isn’t just a death.”

The ability to drive a car might be lost, or to craft quilts, or to perform all the daily small tasks needed to care for themselves, she said.

Sometimes children move their parents from another part of the country because they’re worried about them, she said.

“These parents are brought away from their friends,” Hollenhorst said. “And of course they’re lonely.”

Hollenhorst herself moved here from St. Louis 20 years ago, she said, partly to be near her son, after retiring from a long career in nursing.

Alexandria Leslie, 19, said she volunteered at Homage her senior year of high school and was recently hired to help sort donations over the holidays.

Connecting older people with resources is one way Homage has a big impact, she said. She loves the notes people send with donations, describing that impact, she said.

“Some of these notes are just very heartwarming,” she said, “And sometimes they just make you want to cry.”

Debbie Luce, 65, said she’s always enjoyed older people and has been volunteering as a senior peer counselor for 8½ years.

She said she retired early from a longtime job with the phone company and volunteered with the state to help resolve patient complaints in adult family homes. When she grew tired of the paperwork, she turned to Homage.

Being an effective counselor is all about listening, Luce said, and sometimes that means just sitting quietly.

“I learned long ago that I can’t solve every problem,” she said.

Ray Chan, 72, has been a Senior Companion Program volunteer for just over a year, he said.

With a career in restaurant operations, Chan had to stop for a few months to help open a restaurant, he said, but intends to continue as a volunteer.

Patience and understanding are needed, he said. Sometimes a patient is feeling blue and Chan tries to guide him toward happier thoughts, he said.

Listening is key, said Miriam Baker, 69, who’s volunteered for the Senior Peer Counselor Program for nine years. She’s learned a lot over the years, she said, from fellow counselors as well as from clients.

“People are so diverse and have such interesting lives,” she said. “If you listen to them, everybody has a story.”

For more information on becoming a volunteer for Homage Senior Services, please please email volunteer@homage.org or call 425-355-1112.