It All Ended With Some Sauerkraut Soup

At the end of July Jacquie, a social worker at Loyola, called PeopleCare to let us know about a Riverside resident in need of help.

In this case, Zola was putting up the good fight against cancer of the larynx and needed to have radiation treatments 2 times daily. A friend is taking her for the morning session, but Jacquie was concerned about the afternoon appointments…she asked if PeopleCare might help. Zola needed a ride every day during the four week therapy period.

PeopleCare volunteers to the rescue! We were lucky enough to find people who were willing to commit to one day per week for the next four weeks. They would pick Zola up at 2:45pm and drive her to Loyola in time to be ready for her 3:15 radiation appointment. On top of that, Thom, a member of PeopleCare Board and a Social Worker at Loyola, was able to get daily parking stickers to reduce Zola’s parking costs. That’s dedication!

It wasn’t long before a relationship began to grow between Zola and her drivers. The drivers were all eager to help in any way they could and Zola expressing her heartfelt thanks for all those “faithful drivers” who had driven her. She even described each volunteer and how warmly they treated her. She wondered how we found such caring people to drive her. It was an amazing process and a real feel good moment for all of us!

Later, one of our volunteers called to say she had visited Zola and got an impromptu cooking lesson in the process… Zola showed her how to make sauerkraut soup. They had lunch together and she even got to take home a quart of soup, pierogi and cheese blintzes. It seems Zola was very glad her friend had come…in fact they’re getting together for another cooking lesson very soon.