Meet Jeffrey Heller, Lawyer, R.N. (as his e-mail signature reads).
Jeffrey comes to Project Guardianship from ReServe, an organization that matches retired professionals looking to serve the public good with the nonprofits who welcome their services.
Since 2012, Jeffrey has been bicycling several days a week all over New York City visiting Project Guardianship clients in their homes, and in nursing homes and hospitals.
Jeffrey’s journey of life has been as colorful as his bicycling tours of the city. Raised in a rural farming community in upstate New York, he has been a corporate bankruptcy attorney, a law professor, a private attorney assisting asylum seekers, and a registered nurse.
Jeffrey says it is his joy to find something in common with “just about anybody” that allows him to enter a client’s world.
Drawing on this rich experience, Jeffrey provides another level of face-to-face contact, reporting back to the Project Guardianship team with his astute medical and social observations. Jeffrey says it is his joy to find something in common with “just about anybody” that allows him to enter a client’s world.
Always finding solutions, Jeffrey has taken a client’s cat to the vet and gone grocery shopping. For a client with Parkinson’s, who could no longer afford $15 a pound prime steak, he spoke with the local butcher who suggested a cut of beef at a fraction of the price. It was pureed and prepared, and knowing what she was eating, the client found it “very tasty."
Jeffrey always makes our client feel heard and respected even when they think that no one is listening. In this way, he is able to calm clients when they are in distress (many Project Guardianship clients have dementia). And because many of those he visits are elderly, he has joked that it doesn’t hurt that he “remembers Mamie Eisenhower”!
Project Guardianship serves older adults and persons with disabilities who struggle to live their lives without family or friends to assist them. For them, we are their family and friends when there is no one else. In Jeffrey’s eyes, Project Guardianship is their connection to a caring world.