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Comfort Keeper Pat Weinhardt has been with the organization Client Helen Cape (left) shops with Comfort Keeper Pat Weinhardt at the Target in Central Park. Weinhardt regularly drives Cape. |
W HEN THE national adult-care company Pat Weinhardt works for here picked her out of 18,000 workers as its employee of the year, it was a proud moment.
It's a source of satisfaction both for the 59-year-old Spotsylvania County woman and for the rest of the staff at the Comfort Keepers of the greater Fredericksburg region.
But it didn't come as a surprise to the "clients" served by the big-hearted, hard-working woman who is proud of her roots back in Groundhog Hollow in southern West Virginia.
You see, the second this former Mary Washington Hospital employee passes through their doors, they're no longer her clients.
They're her family, with Weinhardt not just worried about mundane duties like cooking, grooming or assisting with other daily needs.
When she comes through the door, there's going to be laughing, there's going to be storytelling and, most of all, there's going to be light where darkness has often lingered too long.
"One of the simple things I always do with my people is to get them up and out, to Target, Big Lots, wherever," said Weinhardt, who's very happy about being named national Comfort Keeper of the Year. "And I like to do some home cooking for them. Too often, they've been eating TV dinners every night. They like to smell dinner cooking."
Lest you think that the one-time Department of Agriculture employee in Washington is being critical of the way families or relatives care for the elderly who become Comfort Keeper clients, that isn't the case.
"I'm often there because there aren't family members nearby, or because they have work and other demands that make it hard to always be there," said the West Virginia girl who grew up as one of 12 children, 10 of them girls. "That's why it's important to become their family."
Working in shifts that will run from a few hours a week to round-the-clock care, Weinhardt likes to share her own heritage with her extended family.
She'll read to them from books of Appalachian tales, recite her own poetry or tell stories from her childhood, about the way she and her siblings would scour hillsides near the "hollers" to fill 10-gallon buckets with blackberries that would sell for 50 cents.
Other times, she'll do something special, like helping a couple she now cares for celebrate their 63rd anniversary.
Not only did she arrange a special dinner out for the couple, whom she helped dress in their finest clothes, but she took them to her own church for a special Valentine dinner, where the entire congregation helped them celebrate the special event.
Neda McGuire, president of the local Comfort Keepers office in downtown Fredericksburg, said she doesn't usually hire care-givers on the spot, the way she did just minutes after Weinhardt applied nearly four years ago.
"I knew right away she was special, that she had such a caring heart," said McGuire, who took note of the prospective employee's work with an adoptive grandmother program. "You need that kind of heart in this line of work."
McGuire and the rest of the staff at the local Comfort Keepers office, who also are part of Weinhardt's extended family, were thrilled when she was chosen in the initial competition as the Comfort Keeper of the Southeast region.
Interviews with the upbeat grandmother, who builds time off into her schedule to see grandchildren and do some traveling with husband John sealed the deal.
She was honored at the company's yearly meeting in Columbus, Ohio, in late June. Not only did she receive gifts and honors before the large crowd, but also more than a few job offers and invitations to share her story with other caregivers in the company.
She delivered a touching acceptance speech, in the form of a tribute to one of "her ladies," from whom she "always gets more than she gives."
The hardest part of the job, she said, comes in saying goodbye, especially to those she had helped transition from their homes to assisted-living centers.
"It happened yesterday, we put you there, in the nursing home," she said in her tribute. "The decision was not made by the caregivers who were with you every day and every night for a year. Not by those who saw the sadness when you thought of your son, remembering him only as the little, blue-eyed boy who brought a frog into your living room.
"You ask where he is, and why he isn't coming to see you anymore," she wrote. "You remember him from 40 years ago, but you don't remember that he stopped by yesterday."
She concluded this way: "I can't do any more. I pray that God will send his angels to watch over you. And when it's time for him to call you home, that you'll just close your eyes and drift off to that beloved Big Lots in the sky."
She signed off simply: Patricia A. Weinhardt, Comfort Keeper.
It left little doubt why she'd been chosen as the model by the folks whose business it is to provide that type of caring and comfort.
To reach ROB HEDELT:
Email: rhedelt@freelancestar.com
