Huntington Beach woman gives her 90-year-old neighbor a second chance at life
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Annie Messenger is known as the mayor of her Huntington Harbour Village condominium community.
She has designed and sold dozens of houses in the community of manufactured homes.
The way that her 2025 was designed, though, was not something she could not have imagined.
Messenger has been taking care of her 90-year-old former neighbor, Kent Tachibana, for the last several months.
She procured a hospital bed and Tachibana, who has been diagnosed with Stage 4 liver cancer, has taken residence in Messenger’s master bedroom. She now has her own bed in the living room, closer to the front door and across from her office desk.
Why does Messenger care for Tachibana? Well, who else will?
“He had no place to go, no family,” Messenger said. “I just said, ‘You know what? He can come and live with me.’”
It makes sense to Messenger, a spry 75-year-old. Others know that her level of generosity is rare.
Tina Dam is a licensed vocational nurse with Regency Hospice Care who has been in the hospice field for 17 years. She comes to Messenger’s home at least once a week to care for Tachibana.
“Nobody that’s not related would step up to that plate,” Dam said. “In my career, I’ve only seen it one time. She’s like an angel … He’s a very lucky man. He was a dead man, and now he’s alive.”
The adventure started in March, when the roof caved in on Tachibana’s home in the Huntington Harbour Village community. Neighbors said they didn’t see him for a few days after that, so Messenger was asked by her boss, the developer, to do a wellness check.
She brought along her friend who lives down the street, Gabi Shaughnessy, a longtime nurse at Hoag. After Tachibana didn’t answer the door, they called the police.
“A tiny bathroom window was slightly ajar,” Messenger recalled. “We got a ladder, and I was able to open it up and slide in. By that time, the police officer had called the paramedics.”
Tachibana was in bad shape. He was eventually taken to a board and care facility in Huntington Beach, but Messenger said he often was depressed when she would come to see him.
Messenger had obtained power of attorney privileges for Tachibana, whom she said is an American citizen and former engineer but has no family in the country. So, she made the decision to bring him home.
To her home, that is. It’s a space that she was in the process of remodeling, but she put that on the back burner.
Messenger, who has been twice married and has family in Newport Beach, including two granddaughters who attend Newport Harbor High School, now has an adventure buddy. She and Tachibana both love coffee-flavored frozen yogurt, she said with a smile.
“He’s just a skeleton,” she said of Tachibana, who weighs less than 100 pounds. “But he’s still fighting and has a cute personality, so that’s all we care about … Having him live with me, if we want to watch a movie at like midnight, we can do that. [At the board and care home], we couldn’t. He loves Japanese food, and now I love Japanese food.”
The movies, like “Forrest Gump” and “The Devil Wears Prada,” are not ones the soft-spoken and respectful Tachibana has seen before. But he enjoys them. His speech can be hard to understand, so Messenger sometimes asks him to spell out the words.
Tachibana also enjoy being taken outside the home in his wheelchair, where he will sit and have lunch with Messenger as they look at the hummingbirds. On Wednesday night, they had a New Year’s Eve watch party, complete with cookies and milk.
He has already outlived his prognosis of less than five months to live, which the doctor gave him in March. He’s on Medicare and hospice care, Messenger said.
“I think the secret is Annie’s positivity,” said Shaugnessy, who is not a caregiver for Tachibana but still provides support when needed. “That kind of attitude maybe gives him hope … and I think she got something out of it herself. It’s a win-win situation.”
She’s also made believers out of her family members, some of whom were understandably a bit skeptical about Messenger taking a stranger into her home. Her younger sister, Nancy Simenc, got emotional when talking about Messenger’s good deed for her former neighbor.
“A lot of people say, ‘I’ll do this and that,’ but she just does it,” Simenc said, fighting back tears. “She does what’s needed.”
If she has to leave home for a time, Messanger makes sure a caregiver is there. Tachibana’s bedroom is equipped with a camera, allowing her to check on him and talk to him.
Friends have also pitched in — one collects books for Tachibana to read, another friend, who is Japanese, will bring over miso soup and other delectables. A GoFundMe page for Tachibana has raised more than $2,000.
Messenger knows that Tachibana’s long-term prognosis with Stage 4 cancer is not great. Though his mood has improved overall, he still has his good days and bad days.
No matter what happens in the future, though, she has thoroughly enjoyed their time together.
“We’ve got a happy camper living with me,” she said. “He smiles every day, and it’s so worth it. It’s been a good experience.”
