EPISODE 50 – Behind the Scenes at Team Senior with Paula Johnson and Veronica Noble

Episode 50: Behind the Scenes at Team Senior with Paula Johnson and Veronica Noble

Most people know Team Senior as a senior housing referral agency — but that's only a fraction of the story. In this episode, Jamie Callahan sits down with two team members who know both sides of the equation: Paula Johnson, a former adult foster home owner, and Veronica Noble, who spent years in senior living at Brookdale. Now working inside Team Senior, both women share what genuinely surprised them once they saw the full picture of what this organization does every single day.

From five-minute phone calls that connect seniors with free tax resources, to complex legal situations involving dementia diagnoses that invalidated a home sale, to coordinating care for a hoarder's Chihuahua while its owner was in a skilled nursing facility — the range of what Team Senior handles is remarkable. Paula and Veronica bring warmth, humor, and hard-won personal experience to a conversation that makes clear why Southern Oregon families keep coming back to Team Senior no matter what the problem is.

In this episode, you'll hear about:

• Why referrals are now only about 25% of what Team Senior actually does
• How a dementia diagnosis voided a home sale and saved a family from financial devastation
• The creative ways Team Senior fills the gap for low-income seniors waiting on Medicaid services
• How Paula recruited 25 caregivers in 24 hours to help an overwhelmed adult foster home
• The growing mission of New Age Oregon and why it could change lives across the entire state
• Why doctors, attorneys, and real estate agents are now actively partnering with Team Senior

Whether you're a senior, a family caregiver, or a professional in the care community, this episode will change how you think about what it means to truly support aging adults. Team Senior can be reached at 541-295-8230.

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At Team Senior™, our mission is to guide you and support you through the maze of Southern Oregon Long-Term Care.

📞 For Team Senior resources, call: 541-295-8230

Or visit our website for more information: https://www.teamsenior.org/

Transcript

Team Senior Podcast — Episode 50 Behind the Scenes at Team Senior: A Conversation with Paula Johnson and Veronica Noble

JAMIE: Hi, this is Jamie Callahan with the Team Senior Podcast. Our goal is to simplify aging. Society grooms us to plan for retirement, but what about life beyond retirement — where the rubber meets the road? Perhaps you've had a stroke, or you've been diagnosed with cancer, or maybe you're forgetting things and now you have dementia. That's our area of expertise, and we are here to share our insight. And now, the Team Senior Podcast.

Hi, this is Jamie Callahan, and I am in the studio today with two very special people that I have known for quite a long time — Paula Johnson and Veronica Noble. I want you both to take the opportunity to tell us a little bit about how you know Team Senior, but also tell us a little bit about your backgrounds. Let's start with Veronica.

VERONICA: I have been in the medical field for about 20 years. About the last seven of it has been in senior living, and so that's me.

JAMIE: Okay. Paula?

PAULA: And I have worked in the nonprofit field for about 20 years, and then I had an opportunity to own my own business and start an adult care home. And I did, and that's how I came in contact with Team Senior.

JAMIE: Yeah, so we've worked with both Veronica and Paula for quite some time before they joined the Team Senior team in some capacity. I just want to jump right in here, because I really wanted to do this podcast because I know that the general community — and even so many of the professionals that we work with — they have a certain image of what Team Senior does.

But being on the inside now, whereas you were both on the outside previously — Veronica being at Brookdale and Paula owning her own adult foster home that we made referrals to — the common idea is that Team Senior only does that. We make referrals to assisted living. But now that you are a part of the Team Senior team, I want to really drill down on what has surprised you most about what actually happens behind the scenes.

VERONICA: So much. So much — just so much. Again, you just said it: that we were a referral agency. But helping people actually move, going to walk the dog if needed — there are just so many things and bits and pieces that I had absolutely no idea about.

When I first learned of Team Senior, I knew you guys helped people with housing, and I knew you were involved with the veterans. I'm a strong veteran supporter, and I thought, "Oh, that's kind of cool." So that's all I thought you did — and now I know very differently.

Now I know that you guys are involved in a lot. Club 60 is a super cool place. I got to peek in there the other day, and they had a couple of seniors come and ask me if I wanted to do Tai Chi with them. They have just great, fun activities and a place where they can communicate.

The Veterans Breakfast — I'm very impressed with what Team Senior has turned that into. The meetings are in Grants Pass and Medford. I didn't know that. And what a wonderful place for them to come together and be able to connect with each other and learn more resources. Our veterans don't get everything that they need in this world, and Team Senior is a piece and a bridge for that. I'm very impressed with that.

JAMIE: Thank you. Yeah, and the veterans are something that we're very passionate about. I always say that referrals — that's in our name, and when we started in 2016, that was largely our intention: to be a referral agency, maybe nothing else. Now I would say that's probably 25% of what we do.

Veronica, can you describe what the other 75% kind of looks like that nobody really has visibility to unless they're on the inside?

VERONICA: Yeah, let's see. Again, going back — we help veterans. We do the Veterans Breakfast. We do the Adult Foster Home Conference that's coming up in April. We do the senior fair. We just do so many things for the community that people just don't know that we're in the background of.

JAMIE: I know, and I get phone calls from people all the time who want us to advertise with them, and many times I do not, because it is impossible to convey — even with a full page of advertising — what we help with.

Qualifying for Medicaid, fighting a Medicaid appeal, exploring caregiving options when the VA might pay for it and which direction is best for you to go, because there are several different programs. Helping to get somebody into the hospital by dealing with their dog that's at home — at risk because their caretaker is going to be admitted to the hospital, and they don't have any adult children or friends here to do that for them. Navigating power of attorney, conservatorship, guardianship. But even some simpler things — just phone calls that come in. Go ahead.

PAULA: I was covering the phone a couple of weeks ago, and I had a phone call from a senior who said, "I know that there are free resources out there to help me do my taxes, but I don't know where to look." And in five minutes, I was able to give him three or four different phone numbers for him to call so he could do that.

JAMIE: Yeah. And I had a sweet little lady who called, and she said she just wasn't maintaining in her home. She doesn't have any children who live close by, and she has one neighbor, and she was just suffering. She said, "Somebody told me to call Team Senior," and I said, "I'm so glad you did."

And really what she needed was some caregiving services in the home. She didn't want to move. She didn't need to move. But it took about 15 minutes on the phone with her to figure out that she really just needed some caregiving — somebody to help with her groceries and a little bit of companionship. She said she was lonely, and that's something you can get through caregiving. So we were able to set that up very quickly. By the next day, I found out that someone did go out there, and she was doing well.

PAULA: That's so great.

JAMIE: Yeah, and it is a blessing for us to be able to connect them with all of these things. Sometimes we get more complicated calls. And I know, Paula — for example, you took a call not very long ago about someone who was in a legal bind. They weren't exactly sure how to explore power of attorney or what to do with that. Walk folks through what we do behind the scenes when we get those phone calls.

PAULA: If we don't know the answer, we know how to get it. And that's what I think is so special about Team Senior — they really are problem solvers, finding the answers to anything and everything that needs to be handled.

This lady in particular was looking for some help, and she had already gone to several people, and they were sending her to the internet, and she was just about in tears when she came in. I did not have the answer for her, but I knew who had it. And Jamie, you and I got her on a phone call, and it answered all of her questions. In the end, she said, "I'm hoping that I'm going to be able to care for my parents, and if not, I might be calling you guys back and maybe seeking some services."

So it's those little wins that you get — you're just helping and being a bridge for other people to get their needs met. And that's kind of exciting.

JAMIE: Yeah, it is very exciting. And it truly runs the gamut. Recently we got a telephone call — I've shared this with my team some time back — from some adult children whose parents had sold their home, and they were really in a bind.

I didn't immediately have an answer for them. But in talking with them several different times on the phone and really encouraging them to call me back if they hit a roadblock, we continued to explore options and legalities and what the best case scenario was for their parents.

The situation was that the parents — one had a dementia diagnosis, and the other was getting dialysis three days a week. And sadly, the mom who was getting dialysis fell and broke her hip after they had listed the house for sale and the house had been sold. So Mom was hospitalized, not really able to go back home due to transportation to dialysis. She could get dialysis in the hospital, but going back home would make it very difficult to transport her.

In talking with them, what really came to light is that the adult children were now faced with trying to move all of their parents' possessions out of this house where they had lived for many years — and they were just hitting roadblock after roadblock in terms of the amount of time they had. At this point, they had about 20 days from the time the house would close before they needed to get all of Mom and Dad's possessions out.

In talking with the real estate agent and several other people, we really engaged in this dynamic at a very high level. We were talking to our attorney, talking to their real estate agent, talking to the adult children — trying to figure out how to buy the parents some time so we could get their things out of the house.

What ended up happening is that the real estate agent communicated with the buyers. The buyers indicated that they would allow the previous owners to stay in the house for $3,000 a week — which was insanity. So that caused me to take a much deeper dive into their own diagnoses and their ability to make good cognitive decisions. It ended up coming out that both Mom and Dad had a dementia diagnosis, which immediately told me that they did not actually have the legal capacity to even list the house for sale.

So that allowed me to circle back with the real estate agent and let them know that not only are they not going to have their things out of the house, but the house sale is essentially null and void — which our attorney was willing to stand behind. Because when you have a dementia diagnosis, you don't always have the capacity to make those types of decisions. So it completely saved the family. I don't know that they would ever have come to that conclusion, and I don't know what would have happened with that family if we hadn't been willing to spend the time with them to figure out what to do.

PAULA: And that's one thing that I've learned too. I'm dealing personally with my dad and his dementia diagnosis as well. Working with Team Senior, I have learned lots of different resources and things. Luckily, Mom and Dad are still able to be at home and they're doing well, but at some point in time that may not be the case. And when and if that time comes, I know what I'm supposed to do.

I also received — actually, my husband received a call from a long-time friend who asked if we had an opening in our adult care home. And we had closed. He said he'd heard the story and he said, "I'm caring for my parents. One has dementia, one doesn't. They've been in their home for fifty years, and we've been caring for them for a couple of months, and we're exhausted. We feel guilty that we can't — we don't know what to do." And my husband said, "Call Paula, because she works for Team Senior now, and that's what they do." And that was the best my husband could give, but I said, "That was the right answer, babe."

And it was just — to hear the heartbreak in the son's voice: "We've done everything we possibly can. It's not enough. We don't know what to do. They're scared. They don't know what to do. Caregiving isn't cutting it. We all realize they need to move somewhere they can be supported."

And I was just covering for a week, but I got the privilege of walking through those options with them. They went on tours — just the whole gamut. And they have a large family as well, so we had people coming down from Portland and Eugene and all over to help this couple pick the next step in their life.

It was a longer process than I thought they usually went — I've learned a lot in this short period of time. But now the couple is happy, the family is happy, and they are now scheduled to move into their new home in a new facility and start their next leg of life. So that part was really exciting.

And just to hear the anguish that adult children have — because they think, "Oh, we can take care of our parents. We can do it." And sometimes you can't.

JAMIE: Yeah, it is very hard being the caregiver. We talk about the fact that caregivers often predecease the person that they're caring for, because it is such hard work — not just physically, but also emotionally, and all of the stress that comes with it.

I know that I say to people when we are looking at the possibility of hiring someone that you have to be very vested in this work to be a part of Team Senior. Can you both share how this work aligns with your personal values?

PAULA: I've always been a caregiver — that's what I do. I'm the oldest of six, and I was always the caretaker of my brothers and sisters. And most of my professional life I've been some sort of a caregiver, so this was just a natural progression.

I've always been the glue in my family too — bringing the families together. If there was ever any discord, it was, "Call Paula, she'll help." And that's a great role to be in, but it gets very tiring too.

But I think where I align with Team Senior — and I've known you guys for about 10 years now, and I'm still learning something new every day — I really ascribe to the motto: be the change you wish to see in the world. You can't just sit on the sidelines and say, "They should do this, they should do that." If you want to see that, then go help make that change. So I love that Team Senior does that. They are making changes every day. They help people every day.

I think when you told me, Jamie, one time that the phone can get up to 50 calls a day — that's a lot of need in our community. And we might not personally help every single one of those people, because maybe it's, "Let's get you in contact with this attorney." But a lot of times you guys are going out, buying a piece of furniture, moving a family out, helping the little lady on the side of the road. The stories are endless that I'm hearing from you guys, and it just really speaks to why Team Senior is so necessary in our community.

JAMIE: And not just helping individuals. One of Paula's first tasks when she came on board with Team Senior was that we had a foster home that desperately needed caregivers and was very overwhelmed with just the responsibility of running the foster home. So we tasked Paula — you have to share what you did, because it was really amazing and so helpful.

PAULA: They needed caregivers, and I used to be an HR manager, so I thought, "Let me just help them out." So I ran a couple of ads on Facebook and one on Indeed, and within 24 hours I had 25 to 30 caregivers ready to come to work.

It was a little bit like pulling teeth because the adult foster home provider was a little slow on the tasks, and I was like, "Come on, let's get these people hired. Let's get things moving." But in the end, they did hire somebody, and I think they're going to be open for more business soon.

And in the meantime, we had another adult foster home reach out and say, "Do you know any caregivers?" And I said, "Oh, I have a bunch of them." A pile of them. So they said, "Thank you, Team Senior, for helping." I said, "Oh, you're welcome." So that was just on the side, but it's just one of those things where you think you can help with one thing, and sometimes two or three things come out of that, because the need is so great.

JAMIE: It is. It absolutely is, and you really never know what those phone calls are going to look like. It's funny how we have become the one-stop shop for all of these unique things.

I will use this example because it's transpired in about the last four days. I got the same need conveyed to me by four different places — people who just knew to call Team Senior because it was a really unique situation.

The woman had been in the hospital, discharged to a skilled nursing facility. What I didn't know was the whole picture — I do know it now, because we did send somebody to her house to help deal with this. She has a Chihuahua. She's a hoarder. The dog has not been outside in probably a month, so the house is — as you can imagine — not great air quality, because you are stepping in landmines everywhere you go.

The neighbor who was tasked with letting the dog out and feeding and watering it has only been putting out food and water and hasn't been doing anything else. So it was brought to my attention by the skilled nursing facility, by the person's primary care doctor, by Leslie — who has this person as a client and asked me to help find somebody who could deal with this — and then also by the neighbor, who reached out to me directly and asked if we could find somebody else to do it because she didn't want to go in the house anymore.

Somehow a fifth way also came into play, because while I was working on this, Cherie — a volunteer for New Age Oregon, our nonprofit — got a telephone call from the VA. And she went to the house, took pictures, dealt with the dog, and called me to game plan around what we were going to do.

The neighbor is now asking us to rehome the dog. I'm not comfortable giving away somebody's dog, so I said, "Let's go together to the skilled nursing facility and have a conversation with her. What is your long-term plan? You cannot move back into this house." She's low-income Medicaid. I said, "I'm not comfortable doing anything with your dog or even going back to your house again without written permission. So what would you like us to do? I could even take the dog to my house for a few weeks until you're in a place where you can care for the dog again."

She did end up saying that she wanted us to rehome the dog, and so we're in the process right now of writing something up — just so that it's official, so we didn't steal her dog.

But there are so many things like that in the community that people need help with. This is all completely pro bono work that we do. But who else is going to solve that problem? Who do you even call to solve that problem?

PAULA: Call Team Senior.

JAMIE: Call Team Senior. And that's what's so great about the new organization, New Age Oregon. I think that's going to be very beneficial for Southern Oregon — and maybe all of Oregon once it's up and running — to be able to help those low-income Medicaid people that we are currently doing pro bono work for. You can only do so many, but if we had an organization that was funded and running that, how many more people could be served?

That's exactly the objective, and that's the reason why we wanted to start New Age Oregon. Because right now, Team Senior — the foundation of who we are — is to help people. Every single person that is a part of this team does things on their own time to help people every single day. But if we could employ two or three folks who carry that same purpose and feel that same way in their heart, and now they're out there doing only that for eight or ten hours a day — imagine the lives that we could impact.

We have already proven to ourselves under the nonprofit with some volunteers that before people get on service — before they get their Medicaid or move into assisted living, whatever that looks like — they're in a gap. They're getting no services. And oftentimes it's very hard for them to know how to navigate the system to get services.

So former case managers for the Department of Human Services have joined New Age Oregon, and they are now going into people's homes and helping them bridge that gap — from being in their home, isolated and not really capable of navigating the Medicaid system, to being able to get their benefits so that they can get the help that they need.

VERONICA: Yeah, I think that's wonderful.

JAMIE: Yeah, it's been really fun to watch it blossom. We are very much in the infancy stages, and both of these ladies are a part of pulling all of that together. But it definitely gets to the root of what we're trying to do here in Southern Oregon.

I know that you guys know that Team Senior is not just about supporting seniors or caregivers or the folks that work in these communities — it's a broader care network. What do you guys do out in the community to help with all of that?

VERONICA: I go to doctors' offices, attorneys, real estate agents, and I just say, "This is what we do. Let us help. If you have a client or a patient that needs services, here's our contact information — please give us a call." And not only does it help the senior, but it also helps the attorney or the doctor, because they don't know what to do with this person, this problem.

JAMIE: Speaking of doctors' offices — that's so true. They hit a roadblock. When they send somebody out of their office, they don't really know what's going to happen to them. So we have that relationship with many doctors' offices where they will call us to help a person once they get home with whatever they need.

But we've also received some really random calls from doctors' offices — from folks who have maybe missed two or three of their appointments, and the office knows that Team Senior is an organization that will essentially do almost anything. They'll call us and say, "Hey, Mr. Smith hasn't made it to his last three doctor's appointments. Is there any way you can do a wellness check?" We have done that many times.

But we have also received calls from a doctor's office that said, "Mr. Smith lives at this address and he's very hard of hearing — he won't hear you knocking on the door, so you may have to just go in."

Fortunately, we have a fantastic relationship with the fire departments and police departments in both of the southern counties, and we have many times had to call them and say, "Hey, can you escort us to this address so that we're not liable for just entering their home?" And they have been amazing at providing that service for us.

VERONICA: Yesterday — I was just going to say, yesterday we had an experience where I spoke with a couple of different doctors and they had absolutely no idea that we existed. They just kept saying, "Wow, you do this? You do that? You do this?" And I'm like, "Yeah, anytime." One of the doctors said, "Give me all your flyers. I want them in every one of my exam rooms. I want everybody to know what you do so that if we have the need, we know where to call." And I think it's really a big deal to them, because sometimes they just don't know where to start.

JAMIE: I've even made presentations to groups of doctors where somebody raised their hand and asked, "How do we give the dementia diagnosis?" And I had to look at their medical director and say, "You're probably the one that should explain that to them — I can, but..."

But I think it's not just about assisted living, caregiving in the home, all of those things. If I'm talking to somebody on the phone and they're just starting to explore their ideas, I'm reading between the lines about what they need. So if I hear someone saying, "I'm starting to look at assisted living because it's just getting harder and harder for me to take out the trash. It's getting harder and harder for me to get in and out of the shower or the bathtub" — I'm easily able to connect them with organizations like Riverside Home Health, for example.

I know that they'll do all the backend work. So I can reach out to Riverside and say, "Hey, I just talked to this person and I know they could really benefit from some physical therapy in their home. I've already explained to them that it's completely paid for by insurance. They've given me permission to hand off your contact information." And Riverside will come in on the backend — we handle all of the paperwork, all the coordination with their doctor, everything — so that physical therapy can start in their home.

Those are, again, all things that if you're just listening — there are so many things that we are capable of helping people with, because it's easy for us. Paula said earlier, sometimes the phone rings 50 times a day, and in two, three, seven minutes, Team Senior can equip someone with every little thing that they need to do. It's a one-stop set of answers rather than them going out there and trying to figure it all out on their own.

And for me, it fills my cup. I get those phone calls, and because I have all the information in my head, they hang up with me and they're so grateful. I know that we all experience that, right? It feels like a little tiny thing that we're doing, because we just happen to have all the answers since we're the industry experts. But to them, they feel like someone for the first time genuinely helped them.

We've received some just lovely comments. When I was covering for those 10 days, I was doing some follow-up calls and checking in with folks — how are things going, how is caregiving going, seeing if maybe they needed different services. And three or four of them were just like, "I didn't know what I was doing before I called you guys. You helped me so much. You guys are angels. You're heroes." And you hear these sweet things and you're like, "Aw, thanks" — but you really feel the way it's coming through in their voice. They are so grateful and so thankful. And that's the bigger purpose of why we're all here.

PAULA: Absolutely it is.

JAMIE: And I love that. It just makes me so happy all the time. Because we were a referral agency for both of you — we referred business to Paula in her adult foster home, and we referred business to Veronica when she was at Brookdale. I knew with both of them, when they became a larger part of the organization, that it would be shocking to them.

VERONICA: Yeah. It was.

PAULA: It was an eye-opener.

JAMIE: Yeah. And I think that's true for most people in the community — they really have no idea what we do.

Anyway, thank you both so much for being here. It is a pleasure to work with both of you. I feel very grateful, and I absolutely love that you are two of the many people that are a part of Team Senior who truly do this for the right reasons.

VERONICA: Thank you.

PAULA: Thanks for having us.

JAMIE: Have a great day. Thank you for listening to the Team Senior Podcast. We're here every week sharing new and relevant information. Remember, we're just a phone call away. Team Senior can be reached at 541-295-8230. Again, that's 541-295-8230. Until next time, this is Jamie Callahan.