I met Joel Pelayo almost 4 years ago. I say met, but really it was just crossing paths. We were at a healthcare event In the Gorge. There were a lot of people there, but I recall Joel in particular. I learned he worked in community health and, as part of that work, occasionally played his guitar. Perhaps it was the initial dissonance of those two descriptors that made Joel stick to my memory. When his name came up again this past year, I remembered exactly who he was.
Joel is one of nearly 100 Community Health Workers (CHWs) here in the mid-Columbia. It’s a job that has been formalized through hours of trainings and multiple certifications, but its roots can be found in cultures all over the world and throughout history. In Spanish CHWs may be called promotores de salud; translated that means health promoters. CHWs are typically natural community leaders who are already trusted…the people whose names seem to pop up whenever there’s a need. That’s certainly the case for Joel and his colleague, Maria Antonia Sanchez. I had the chance to meet them both when they gave a presentation for the Sense of Place Lectures. With more than 2-decades on the job, Joel is one of the longest serving CHWs in the Gorge. It’s a role that draws on a lifelong consideration of others.
Joel was born in Santa Rosalia in Jalisco, Mexico. The town was small, just 400 inhabitants, but Joel liked that: “Tt’s wonderful, because everyone knows each other.” He grew up swimming in the river with friends, going fishing and hunting. He also grew up working; first it was planting corn, squash, and beans and then, when he was only 12, he managed a hotel. “It was a huge responsibility, but I started to grow up very early…because I needed to support the family.”
The search for opportunity took Joel to new places and larger cities, like Manzanillo (Colima), where he met his wife, Irma Galvez de la Mora. “I was looking for her brother…and when I knocked on his door, she walked out.” After the two married they decided to move to Hood River, where his wife had family. Joel still remembers what it felt like to arrive in Hood River: “It was more pure, more fresh. That was my sense of the air and environment here.”
Joel, Sarah, and Toña Sanchez.
Contributed photo
Despite a network of family and friends, Joel and Irma discovered there was a lot they still needed. “Everything started to happen at the same time.” They needed housing, transportation, and medical care for Irma (who was pregnant). Nowadays, Joel will refer to such needs as the “social determinants of health” – an important way of highlighting how our health is affected by so much more than just what happens in the doctor’s office. For example, if you have a prescription medicine, but no way to go pick it up, that’s a problem. Or if you want to eat healthier, but the only “grocery” store in town is a gas-station market, it’s going to be hard to find nutritious food. Community Health Workers are trained to recognize these potential obstacles and then to problem-solve ways to overcome them. Oftentimes a solution that begins with an individual goes on to benefit an entire community.
Joel manages to maintain a soft-spoken calm that can make you forget just how many people rely on him. Beyond his role as a CHW, he also helped to start a community garden project (Raïces, meaning “Roots”) and a mental/emotional support program (Valle Verde). Listen to him talk about his many projects – the ‘babies’ he’s helped to deliver--- and you’ll quickly realize how much this work means to him: “Yeah, that’s another baby!”
Joel is so focused on others that you might never learn there have been times he’s needed some serious help himself. “About 3 years ago I started to feel tired…” Joel’s kidneys were failing. He began to receive regular dialysis treatments – 3 days a week, 4 hours each time. He continued to work as much as he could, while the search for a new kidney began. After decades working on behalf of Gorge residents, the community now rallied in support of Joel. A local fundraising effort collected thousands of dollars in donations to help with medical costs. Then, this April, three years after he was first diagnosed, Joel finally received a new kidney. “I feel better day by day.” At 65 years old, Joel is a daily reminder of how the work of one can impact many.
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