Volunteers Help Seniors Keep the PACE

Mary Lou Frandsen can tell you that watching a spouse spiral into the grips of Alzheimer’s disease is one of the hardest things a wife can do. Her husband’s death only increased the emotional and practical difficulties.

The 75-year-old retired statistician, who lived with her husband Bill in Anaheim for more than 30 years, said she did not feel the need for professional psychological help.

But she was relieved when a counselor from a support group told her about a program at St. Joseph Hospital that sends volunteers into the homes of seniors who need extra help to cope.

Known as PACE, the hospital’s Psychological Alternative Counseling for Elders program has been helping families seek alternatives to anxiety, grief, loneliness, life changes, retirement and other issues for the last 12 years.

For Frandsen, forming new friendships in her age group can be tedious. “Some of these people are so crotchety,” she explained. But she said she “clicked” right away with Astrida Chiales, a PACE volunteer.

“We talk about what we’ve been through,” Frandsen said. “It’s like a shoulder, it’s like a deep friendship. She boosts my morale.”

Chiales, 60, an Orange resident now retired from nursing and lab work, said she loves her role as an alternative counseling volunteer.

“I have the best clients,” she said. “It gives me a good feeling in my heart.”

Part of Chiales’ job is to simply alleviate loneliness. But she also has resources to help stroke patients, the recently bereaved and others adjust to their new lives.

There is no one personality that best fits a PACE volunteer, Chiales said. But it does help if volunteers can help seniors in crisis find some humor in their situation, she added.

The volunteers go through training for three hours a week, for 10 weeks, said Katie Monarch, a counselor with the hospital’s community counseling program who works with the volunteers.

If volunteers are at a loss for information, they can always turn to a counselor in the office, Monarch said.

While 12 men and women visit 57 clients once a week, Monarch said the program could use many more volunteers.

For more information on the program, call the hospital’s community counseling office at (714) 771-8243.