A Thanksgiving Story

Thanksgiving Memories with Nancy
from Allison Moody, Nancy’s Sister-in-Law

Kirk's family got a wild hair in 1994, and decided to surprise Kirk and Nancy by crashing their Thanksgiving dinner. They had invited Kirk's mom Kati, so we thought we were entitled to eat there as well. Kirk's siblings Karen, Allison, and Rex, niece Amber, nephew Ryan and sister in-law Susan, all flew to LAX with Kati. Kirk picked Kati up at the airport gate (remember when we could do that!?) while the rest of us "hid" on the airplane, and then shared two hotel rooms – boys and girls.
Wednesday, we went to Disneyland and got Mickey Mouse ears hats with our names stitched on the front. (Rex had "Grumpy") And on Thanksgiving, we arrived at their doorstep in our hats and good clothes. Nancy answered the door. She opened it, closed it, and from inside the house we could hear “Kirrrrrk! You'd better come here!” We thought that was priceless...the closed door especially! Of course, they had a full house already, including Nancy's parents George and Joan, Kirk's cousin Melissa Walsh and her family and a bunch of friends who played a lot of basketball in the driveway. Nancy made the mashed potatoes, yams and helped Kirk with all manner of other dishes.

On Friday, two more Colorado friends, Stru and Peg (THE Peg who is now the Care Facility Phone Call Manager in our efforts to find Nancy) joined us and we went to Universal Studios (we were all checking out our friend Stru's new honey). What a great time we all had on that trip!

Happy Thanksgiving. Let’s Bring Nancy Home!

 Kirk and Nancy preparing MORE food!

Newly minted Mousketeers Amber and Allison

A Few Memories ...

Memories from her father for Nancy’s birthday weekend.

Nancy learned to ski at around age four or five. Early in her skiing “career” one morning at Mammoth Mountain, she was skiing with Mom and Dad on Chair 1. Mom fell, Dad stayed to help Mom up. Meantime Nancy kept skiing and took a turn at a fork in the trail toward Chair 2 which had not yet been opened for the day . Mom and dad skied down to the base of Chair 1 at the Mammoth Lodge. “NO NANCY!!” It was about 9AM the temperature was 8F. The ski patrol refused to go looking for Nancy with the comment that they swept trails at the end of the day. PANIC! But looking up, a few minutes later, here comes Nancy, with a wide smile on her face, being guided down the trail by an adult skier. Nancy had indeed made it to the bottom of Chair 2 on her own which had just started running, whereupon a friendly adult and Nancy rode the chair up together and skied down together. Nancy thought this was a great adventure!

This kind of adventuresome spirit, manifested at an early age, was so typical of Nancy.

Our tradition is to walk from one South Bay pier to two others on milestone birthdays. We usually stopped at each one for a bite or a drink or both. When Nancy turned 50, we got a bonus with a Broncos game, which we watched at our traditional hangout Grunions. Good times!
 

Increasing Awareness - Local Task Force, Flyers in other languages, and more coverage of LA Found

Alzheimer's Los Angeles participates in the San Gabriel Valley Alzheimer's Task Force, which consists of professionals who deal with dementia patients such as employees of care facilities and social workers.  Kelly Honda of AlzLA set up an opportunity for me to share Nancy's story with this group last week, and that helps them understand real world issues in dealing with Alzheimer's sufferers, but also helps us spread Nancy's information to a larger network of key people.

It is also fortuitous because along with Kelly, Angie Yeh, Juyoung Park, and Yuan Yao were there.  Juyoung updated our Korean version of the flyer, and Yuan provided two Chinese versions.  Thanks so much to AlzLA for doing this!   I put these in a shareable folder that you can find on the right hand side of the blog.  And it is also right here:

Flyers in other languages

Also, other newspapers are picking up parts of the Rob Kuznia article and increasing the awareness of LA Found and Project Lifesaver.

I couldn't find an on-line version of this, but my sister sent me an image from today's Denver Post:

This is big: Washington Post Article by Rob Kuznia

This is an article by Rob Kuznia about LA Found - featuring our search for Nancy:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/some-people-with-dementia-wander-away-and-get-lost-a-bracelet-can-help-find-them/2018/11/02/58ee2ab6-d94b-11e8-83a2-d1c3da28d6b6_story.html?utm_term=.109fa04209e0