subject: Himfr.com Reports Offering Support For 'our Families At Good Sam' [print this page] When Sue Schoff retired, and her daughter went off to college, she wanted to do something meaningful with her time. So she joined the most popular
volunteer program at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Gatos as a "cuddler" holding babies in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit while their parents
were away.
As much as she enjoyed spending hours with infants, something kept nagging at her: Why aren't the parents here?
"I knew as a mother I would try to be there as much as possible," she says.
What she found out from the doctors, nurses and social workers "blew me away."
The reasons were simple: Some parents didn't have a car. Some mothers had had Caesarean sections and couldn't drive for two weeks. Some had no baby
sitters to watch their other children. Others lived as far away as Fresno and either couldn't afford the daily drive to the top-notch neonatal
hospital or were too exhausted to do so.
In other words, they needed a ride, money for gas, a place to stay, someone to watch their kids for a little while.
"They seemed so basic to me," says Schoff. "Certainly, we could do something for our families at Good Sam."
In 2007, she started ACCESS, "A Caring Community of Education, Services and Support." She harnessed volunteers to give rides, offer their guest
rooms and play with siblings in hospital waiting rooms while mothers nursed their sick infants or met with doctors. She sought donations for gas,
meals and motel
vouchers and stocked a special sitting room on the NICU floor with snacks, drinks and literature.
Schoff is hoping Wish Book readers cannot only volunteer as drivers and hosts and donate vouchers, but also give money to help pay for a full-time
position to run the program. "We can't run ourselves down to zero," says Schoff, 58, who retired from her job as an educational psychologist in
2004. Having a paid staff person would not only keep the program running, but expand it to help families of other patients hospitalized for
extended times, including high-risk pregnant women, who often are bedridden in the hospital apart from their other children at home. She's hoping
to raise $100,000.
"My dream for ACCESS when I first started was not just parents with preemies, but anyone with someone in the hospital," says Schoff.
She envied the Ronald McDonald House in Palo Alto and studied similar programs at hospitals on the East Coast. She wrote up a plan. She applied for
grants.
She started, though, with the babies.
Last year alone, 500 families took advantage of the ACCESS program (www.accessgoodsamsanjose.org). With a baby's average stay in the intensive care
unit at 21 days, and some hospitalized as long as seven months, parents couldn't be more grateful.
Esther Salazar is one of them. Because she had complications with her pregnancy, her doctor in Los Banos advised that she give birth at Good Sam in
Los Gatos 65 miles from home. Her baby, Gonzalo, was born prematurely in late August, weighing 3 pounds, 12 ounces. He needed to remain in the
neonatal ward for nearly two months.
Because her husband drives the family's only car to work in the fields of the Central Valley six days a week, the only day she could see her baby
was Sunday. That's when ACCESS stepped in, providing drivers who picked her up at 9 a.m. and took her home at 6 p.m., plus some overnight stays.
They also gave her vouchers for meals and gas for her husband and three older children to join her and the baby on Sundays.
At the hospital entrance, Al Blood, a retiree who frequently made the trip to Los Banos to pick up Salazar, wished her well as he dropped her off
on an early fall day.
"These people are not related to me and often don't speak my language," she says through a Spanish interpreter. "But they have opened their homes
to me. They are really good people."
Schoff started with a core group of volunteers from the hospital auxiliary: Sandy Hickok agreed to be the service chairwoman and Daphne Teifeld the
program treasurer.
"At first, I was overwhelmed with the scope and vision, and Sue was doing everything herself," says Margaret Ann Joiner, president of the auxiliary
board who oversees the ACCESS program. "She's got energy galore and focus."
But to take the program to the next level and unite children with their pregnant mothers who might be confined to the hospital, or parents with
their critically ill, older children in the pediatric unit, Schoff and her volunteers need more help. Each $50 donation to the Wish Book will help
build a fund to expand the work of ACCESS.
For now, though, when Schoff walks through the ward filled with cribs and nurses and machines, nothing makes her happier than seeing mothers
