Seniors in assisted living and nursing facilities around Orange County got a heartfelt surprise for Valentine’s Day: handmade cards to wish them a happy holiday.
Volunteers – including Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops, local students, Laguna Beach attorney Meldie Moore and her staff, and a resident who happened to hear about it on Nextdoor – broke out the craft supplies and made 2,340 valentines. Ombudsmen with the Council on Aging – Southern California delivered the Hallmark-holiday cheer to some of the more than 29,000 seniors who live in more than 1,000 facilities around the county.
The love-spreading effort came out of Moore’s attempts to make the pandemic more bearable.
“With COVID and how depressing everything was in September 2020, I just decided I wanted to do something to give back,” she said. So she launched a series of projects, one every month, for the staff at her Laguna Beach law firm.
To help small businesses, she gave each of her employees $100 to spend at a mom-and-pop shop in town. For Thanksgiving, they picked local nonprofits and made donations. The February theme was Valentine’s Day, so she asked around and within a week had 1,000 hand-crafted cards that she knew the Council on Aging would be able to hand out to seniors.
The pandemic has been especially hard on older people in care facilities, which at times had to bar visitors and even confine residents to their rooms to avoid spreading the virus, said Libby Anderson, who directs the Council on Aging’s ombudsman program.
“It was heart-wrenching,” she said, and the valentines offered “a way to lift their spirits and make them feel like we haven’t forgotten them.”
Barbara Broese certainly felt remembered when ombudsman Nancy Bejarano brought her a valentine and a flower on Friday. Broese pronounced it “very nice” and said she planned to display the card in her room at the Whitten Heights Assisted Living in La Habra, where she’s lived for nearly 17 years.
Bejarano delivered about 150 cards on Friday and was happy to do it.
“They just get the biggest smiles on their faces for anything I do,” she said. “They don’t expect to be given anything – you just can’t help but be touched.”
Moore said she and her staff have enjoyed the community projects so much, she plans to keep them up and would welcome anyone who wants to join. Anyone interested in making valentines for seniors next year or helping give back in other ways may email [email protected].
Photographer Sam Gangwer contributed to this report.