As for many, Jo Carey's decision to live in Alaska meant being away from family. When she and her husband, Bob, came to Alaska in 1972, they lived in Anchorage and spent time near the community of Skwentna.
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Jo Carey of Homer was recently honored at Alaska Community Services Senior Companion Program's "February 2008 Volunteer of the Month."
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"Our mothers lived in retirement homes and I couldn't help, I was so far away," Carey said.
Now in her 80s and living in Homer, Carey volunteers through Alaska Community Services' Senior Companion Program at the South Peninsula Hospital Long Term Care Center. She has been involved in the program since 2001.
"When I have the opportunity to do something like this, I feel like I'm repaying in some small way the people that helped our mothers," Carey said, referring to the care and support others gave to her and Bob's parents. "That's one reason why I started this and I've never regretted a day of it."
For her deep, long-term commitment, Carey was named Alaska Community Services Senior Companion Program's "February 2008 Volunteer of the Month."
"Jo is always ready, willing and able," April Maloney, director of the program, wrote in the announcement of the award. "She takes to heart each of her clients, offering them love, compassion and friendship."
Carey crafts items to sell that help raise money for the Long Term Care Center. She shares her suggestions with the center's two other senior companions Edith Hawkey and Jane Baier and has organized her insights into mini in-service training workshops for other volunteers.
"Recently, Jo accepted a position on the Alaska Community Services Advisory Council, making a difference in even more lives by offering advice and council to the agency," Maloney wrote."
Lynn Hibdon, activity coordinator at SPH Long Term Care Center, had high praise for Carey.
"She's got one speed forward and fast," Hibdon said. "She's a worker. I can't keep up with her. She's amazing."
Although Hibdon is technically Carey's supervisor, that relationship has turned around.
"She does most of the training, I'm just a figurehead," Hibdon said. "She's very kind, very patient. She really loves these people up here. She's my right-hand gal."
The Senior Companion Program fosters meaningful, personal relationships, while helping the state's senior citizens remain active and independent. Volunteers who are 60 years old or older serve Alaska's population of frail older adults, adults with disabilities and those with terminal illnesses, as well as providing respite for caregivers. Sometimes the interaction involves helping with simple chores. Sometimes senior companions provide transportation. Sometimes it's something as simple as getting acquainted with Long Term Care residents.
"I like to do that," Carey said. "When they're eating, I can sit and talk and help if necessary. Sometimes we are needed to ride along when they go out for a ride in the van or go out to eat. The other day, we played darts with the men's group. There are all kinds of things going on all the time."
Different activities and a variety of settings Carey shares with Long Term Care residents have deepened the relationships she has developed with her companions.
As an example, Carey described a recent eating-out experience with a woman whom Carey had never seen display much of a reaction.
"I could sit and talk and that was it," Carey said. "But she had some family with her and I saw an entirely different person reacting to the foods and to the family that was there with her. It was just an awful lot different. I look at her in an entirely different way now."
Volunteers with the program receive a tax-free stipend for the time they volunteer up to 20 hours a week that doesn't affect Social Security benefits, housing subsidies or any assistance they receive.
For Hibdon, the Senior Companion Program is a boost in the lives of Long Term Care residents.
"It's a good program and I hope we get someone interested," she said, hoping others will volunteer. "The residents up here wouldn't have as good a quality of life without these senior companions."
Carey's experiences as a senior companion have added significance to her and her co-companions' role.
" If you don't get acquainted with something like that, you don't realize what a difference it makes with a resident when they have someone helping them exercise their thoughts and action," Carey said.
"That helps. I know. I've seen a difference in folks when we can work with them. It makes me want to keep coming."
For more information on the Senior Companion Program, call Hibdon at 235-0233 or Maloney at (800) 770-6472.
McKibben Jackinsky can be reached at mckibben.jackinsky@homernews.com.
