STANISLAUS COUNTY, Calif. — During their weekly visit at her Modesto home, 69-year-old Lauri Dugall and Friendly Visitors volunteer Don Wilbanks were hard at play on the Tri-ominos game before them.
It’s become a favorite pastime for the two since they were paired a couple of months ago through the program of the Stanislaus County Area Agency on Aging’s Project Hope.
“We hit it off right from the beginning,” said Dugall, rarely taking her focus off the game as she spoke. “One of us, I don’t remember which, said, ‘I love backgammon,’ and the other said, ‘I was looking for a partner,’ so we started playing backgammon. Then I brought out Tri-ominos and we’ve been hooked on it.”
“She slaughtered me five games in a row on this one,” Wilbanks added. “But she was pretty good at kicking my butt on backgammon, too.”
Dugall was an accountant until retiring on disability. She said she was in good health until age 55, but since has suffered from fibromyalgia, diabetes, kidney problems and three heart attacks.
She underwent a procedure, a cardiac ablation, that “gave me a new lease on life,” she said. “I have energy I hadn’t had. I feel so much better and thought it was time I started a new phase in life.”
That new phase included signing up with the Friendly Visitors program through Project Hope. Friendly Visitors are volunteers 18 or older who make social visits with seniors — usually those who don’t have many opportunities to interact with others, said Arthur Ramirez, director of volunteer services for Stanislaus County Aging and Veterans Services.
There are 22 seniors in Stanislaus County paired with Friendly Visitors, and a few more on a waiting list. The program gets referrals from other departments and agencies it works with, Ramirez said, and also self-referrals from people who see Friendly Visitors fliers in the community rooms of the places where they live.
Turlock resident Bob Mitchell, 85, was signed up for the program by his ex-wife, Nina, nearly three years ago. Though married 10 years and divorced for the past 39, the Mitchells have remained close friends; Nina Mitchell said he needed more social interaction. She would see her ex daily, and their grown daughters would visit from the Bay Area, but that was it.
“This program appealed to me a lot,” she said. “He’s my best friend and I want the best for him, and Sue is part of that.”
“Sue” is Sue Dorville, who has been Bob Mitchell’s first and only Friendly Visitor. Gesturing toward Dorville across a restaurant table during lunch Sunday, Nina Mitchell said, “This lady here, I think of her as an angel disguised in human clothing.”
Bob Mitchell was living independently in an apartment until falling in his bathroom last spring. He had a stroke and also has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and what’s called “dementia with Lewy bodies,” which leads to a decline in thinking, reasoning and independent function.
Of her visits with him, Dorville said, “The idea is to get more out of Bob.”
He’s in assisted living at Brandel Manor.
“They have an activities room with nice projects, but he’s not interested,” Nina Mitchell said.
Dorville sometimes brings games, puzzles or craft kits to share with Bob Mitchell. She and her husband, Ron, have had the Mitchells over for Thanksgiving, and Dorville has taken Bob and Nina, who’s also 85, on trips including to have tea in Columbia and view old aircraft at the Castle Air Museum.
But what Dorville and Mitchell seem to enjoy most is conversing, having friendly debates. She’s a staunch Democrat and he’s Republican.
“I rattle his cage more than most people do,” said the Australia native, who’s been in the United States since 1973. Over lunch Sunday, they briefly argued the virtues and vices of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
“He can add to conversations. He gives opinions, doesn’t just respond to what I say,” Dorville said. When she referred to Trump as an idiot, he answered that the word was “misplaced, in his case. He’s a shrewd cookie.”
Around others, he tends toward being a man of few words, Dorville said.
Where he lives, “they think he has nothing to say,” she said. “You have lots to say, don’t you, Bob?”
“Depends who I’m talking to,” he replied softly.
Back at the Tri-ominoes game, having some “quality conversation” also is one of the reasons Dugall — a divorced mother of three grown children who live out of state — sought a Friendly Visitor.
“I like games, talking, reading — things I normally do that would be more enjoyable with company,” she said.
Wilbanks felt the same way. The 65-year-old was looking on the county’s website for employment (“I’m just out of work right now, but I have to get work, so I can’t call myself retired”) but finding nothing, decided to offer himself up for volunteer work. “I saw the Friendly Visitors program and thought it would be something I’d enjoy. … I’m a blabbermouth,” he said.
He said he doesn’t think of Dugall as a client but as a friend, and believes he gets as much out of their visits as she does.
Their weekly meetings typically last at least two hours. While they often play games or just talk, Dugall said, they also enjoy “getting out and getting some exercise, and now if the weather is going to stay nice, that will be easier.”
Dorville said she also gets a lot out of her visits.
“I was looking for something to do,” said the 67-year-old Modesto resident and substitute teacher. “I volunteer at the Empire library and do other stuff, but to me, this is really fulfilling.”
Looking across the table at Mitchell, whose career was as a social services counselor for the state of Ohio, she said, “Bob is a nice guy, aren’t you, Bob?”
“The best,” he answered.
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