At 80, Nurse Is an Angel With Tireless Wings

Could convalescent home nurse Virginia Arcangel have a more fitting surname, her patients wonder.

She’s a diminutive hugging machine in sensible, white shoes. She’s a dispenser of soothing kindness and gentle teasing. She’s an unstoppable caretaker who says she loves the home’s residents and considers them family.

And the sweet--if sometimes tough--woman in the traditional white nurse’s uniform has been doing it with much the same enthusiasm since the early days of World War II, through the arrival of HMOs and the departure of the starched white hat.

At 80, Arcangel is a few months older than her average patient.

“She’s tireless. She’s like the Energizer bunny,” said Suzanne Arragg, director of nursing at The Californian, Ventura Convalescent Hospital, who was years from being born when Arcangel took up the vocation. “She’s a friend to confide in for our patients.”

It’s a long way from Arcangel’s native Philippines, where she began her nursing career in 1941 under the buzz of Japanese planes, to here: the nursing home where residents gathered for a belated 80th birthday party Wednesday.

You wouldn’t guess she is 80. You wouldn’t have to. She would be the first to tell you her age. Even as an octogenarian, Arcangel, who took the name when she married in the Philippines, doesn’t think about retiring. She wants to stay as long as they need her.

Only minutes after the group sang “Happy Birthday” to her, she was off to deliver a snack to a diabetic patient. Her colleagues had to drag her back for a photo. She works full time, which typically turns into overtime. Some days it’s 6:30 a.m. until 6:30 p.m.

“This is where I’m happy,” she said, accepting frivolous questions on her rounds with good-natured terseness. “I feel good because I help my patients when I can. They know that I love them.”

Carol Williams, who is about 30 years Arcangel’s junior, said that since surgery on her elbow, she has been working hard to strengthen it before she leaves the convalescent hospital for her son’s home. “I wanted to be able to hug her with both hands,” she said.