Rheva Wren and Joki at the Hood River Care Center for a window visit to a resident. Care facilities were some of the first to close at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Rheva Wren, bereavement and volunteer coordinator for Heart of Hospice, is pictured above with Lumi and Joki. Joki is a certified therapy dog and Lumi is a therapy cat in training, and the two are best friends.
Rheva Wren, bereavement and volunteer coordinator for Heart of Hospice, is pictured above with Lumi and Joki. Joki is a certified therapy dog and Lumi is a therapy cat in training, and the two are best friends.
Photo courtesy of Rheva Wren
Rheva Wren’s newsletter project, featuring Joki the goldendoodle and Lumi the ragdoll cat, came about from the desire to let those residing in care centers know they weren’t forgotten during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Wren is the bereavement and volunteer coordinator with Heart of Hospice, a hospice care center located in the Ferment building at 407 Portway in Hood River. Heart of Hospice provides care for terminally ill patients and support for the patient’s family and caregiver, according to its website (hospice.io/care/heart-of-hospice-hood-river-or).
Joki's newsletters feature his best friend Lumi and are regularly distributed to senior living facilities, both locally and nationally.
Photo courtesy of Rheva Wren
In normal times, her job involves assigning and supervising Heart of Hospice volunteers — maybe taking a new volunteer to meet a new patient, or checking in with them when that patient passed. Sometimes, it was a patient birthday or anniversary party. And Joki would be right there, too.
Joki is a certified therapy dog and had made several rounds in local care facilities before the pandemic.
Rheva Wren and Joki at the Hood River Care Center for a window visit to a resident. Care facilities were some of the first to close at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Photo courtesy of Rheva Wren
“He doesn’t do anything special. He just snuggles up and makes people feel better,” Wren said. And that went for patients and staff.
“We did something called ‘self-care time,’ at MCMC (Mid-Columbia Medical Center), where myself and Joki and some of the other pet therapy volunteers would hang out, and staff could come out and pet the dogs,” she said. “It’s important. People don’t realize how much better it makes you feel to just pet a dog for a minute.”
But when the pandemic forced the closures of senior care facilities, Joki could no longer make his visits.
“Joki couldn’t see anyone anymore,” she said. “We’d do window visits at care facilities and that was almost more difficult because those with memory issues couldn’t remember we’d been there — and he would hear voices of the people he loved, but he couldn’t see them. That was hard on him.”
And that’s when she decided to start a newsletter as a way to give those patients a reminder that they had not been forgotten. During some of Joki’s visits, patients or family would take his photo to put up on the wall — now, they could put up a newsletter featuring Joki and his best friend Lumi.
“Lumi is Joki’s cat,” she said. “He came home with us because Joki was so sad when he had to stay home.” Having been raised with a golden retriever, Lumi was Joki’s best friend on day one. Lumi is now a therapy cat in training, which includes walks around the neighborhood with Joki and trips to the pet store. And that friendship is featured in each newsletter delivered weekly to local care facilities.
Joki and Lumi on one of their adventures. Joki is a certified therapy dog and Lumi is a therapy cat in training.
Photo courtesy of Rheva Wren
“A newsletter is something they can hold onto,” she said. “… I would take them to facilities when we did window visits.”
At first, she included a handwritten note for each patient. But as things got busier, she no longer had time — so she started asking others to write.
As of today, she estimates 5,300 pieces of correspondence have been delivered and the project has expanded beyond its original scope.
“I’ve personally done a couple hundred every other week, but this is a group of people from all over the place, writing to residents — to anybody who is isolated and needs a boost,” she said. Letter writers include two girls from mainland China and a newspaper reporter from France.
Joki and Lumi are best friends. As a therapy cat in training, Lumi regularly goes on neighborhood walks with Joki, as well as to the pet store.
Photo courtesy of Rheva Wren
She takes packets of her newsletters to local facilities at least once a week to drop off at the administration desk for distribution throughout the day. When some facilities started quarantining mail, she began emailing the newsletters so they could be printed off on site.
She has gotten requests for newsletters from facilities in Portland, and has sent them to sister Hospice locations in Klamath Falls and Georgia. MCMC gets packets as well.
“Sometimes, people writing letters will say, ‘My grandma lives in Florida,’ so I’ll send a packet to them, too,” Wren said.
She doesn’t always hear back from those who receive the newsletters, but locally, they are a hit.
“Some of it, I don’t hear back because I don’t know the people — I don’t hear much from the ones far away,” she said. “Locally, they really like it. Sometimes, nurses will come out and tell me they see those letters hanging in the elevator or on walls. Some write back and that’s really sweet; I have those on my fridge at home.”
Wren said she’s grateful to have an employer who allows her to write the newsletters, as well as to have found so many people willing to reach out in this way to seniors.
“I was really surprised, pleasantly so,” she said. “It’s been really fun to reach out to people and hear from people in New Jersey or New York who want to write to people, and get addresses from people who want letters from Joki and Lumi.
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