After three years of driving Linda Dee to her medical appointments across Seattle, Susan Cady has her system down: She dons a face mask, arrives at the medical clinic with enough time for check-in and keeps a blanket in the trunk in case her passenger gets cold.
Cady’s system, developed over hours and miles, doesn’t just connect Dee, 81, to essential medical care. It also provides both with friendship during a time of life when isolation and loneliness can pose serious health risks.
“For someone who doesn’t have friends or family, it could be easy to sink into living alone and feel lost,” said Cady, 71. “Socialization is one of the reasons I do this — it gets me out of the house to meet people and it gives you an appreciation for your health.”
Each year, The Seattle Times Fund for Those in Need raises money for charities that help children, families and older adults. Throughout the season, we tell the stories of people and organizations who make a difference in the lives of thousands, and the impact donors can have.
Cady is among 182 volunteer drivers for Sound Generations, the state’s largest comprehensive services provider for older adults, adults with disabilities and their caregivers. The organization’s volunteer transportation program has provided King County residents 60 and older free transportation to medical appointments since the program launched in 1975.
Sound Generations, which also manages five senior centers and provides affordable meals at 20 locations across King County, is among 13 nonprofits benefiting this year from readers’ donations to The Seattle Times’ Fund for Those in Need.
And this year, the organization — especially its volunteer transportation program — is at a crossroads.
Sound Generations, which receives most of its funding from the City of Seattle’s Aging and Disability Services fund, is facing a $364,000 budget deficit next year, including losing $64,000 in funding for its volunteer transportation program. And the organization is struggling to replenish its cohort of volunteer drivers, which fell by more than 50% during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Sound Generations’ transportation director Phirun Lach.
With fewer volunteer drivers, Sound Generations — formerly called Senior Services — has been spending about $100,000 annually to transport people via Lyft rides to their medical appointments, Lach said.
“Transportation, besides food scarcity, is one of the major needs of older adults,” Lach said. “But we’re operating on less than what we have been, while demand has been increasing.”
Donations to Sound Generations would help offset the cost of rideshares, while also helping the nonprofit recruit more volunteers and potentially hire employees to drive people to appointments in Seattle and Bellevue, where needs are highest, Lach said.
More funding would also support other “life changing and life saving” services the organization provides relating to food security, health and wellness and assistance services. Those services include fitness and fall prevention classes, free legal advice and free minor home repairs, such as repairing broken toilets, installing grab bars and clearing clogged drains.
Among Sound Generations’ longest-running and most popular service is the volunteer transportation program, which has provided nearly 79,000 trips since the organization started tracking them in 2018, including nearly 6,200 so far this year.
Many passengers, like 70-year-old Teresa Conyers, use the rides because they don’t have family or friends who live nearby or who can take them to their appointments during normal business hours.
Conyers, who lives in Seattle’s Upper Queen Anne neighborhood, has been using the program for a decade. She has up to four weekly appointments, including to see a rheumatologist, neurologist, dermatologist and naturopath. Without the free transportation, she would be “housebound,” Conyers said.
“There’s a lot of stress taken off of you asking, ‘Will I get there on time or lose this doctor or have to pay for a missed appointment because I’m late?’” she said. “I don’t know what I would do without them — I would literally not be getting any medical (attention) whatsoever.”
The transportation also provided Conyers a rare opportunity to socialize, especially as more of her friends have died.
That socialization can be key to protecting aging adults from isolation and loneliness, which become more difficult to avoid as spouses or friends die, children move away or mobility issues worsen with age, said Dr. Caitlin Coyle, director of the Center for Social & Demographic Research on Aging at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
“That somebody is taking the time to give you a ride to this medical appointment and bring you home, all the while using their own vehicles … and getting to know each other along the way can remove this perception of being a burden,” Coyle said. “It’s a renewal of the social contract that, ‘I’m alive, you’re alive, we’re doing this together.’”
The consequences of feeling lonely and isolated can be deadly, increasing a person’s risk of anxiety, depression, heart disease and dementia, and affecting a person’s mortality the same as if they smoked 15 cigarettes per day, said Amanda Krisher, associate director of behavioral health at the Center on Healthy Aging at the National Council on Aging.
Regular social interactions, even as short as a trip to an appointment, can help aging adults feel connected and build their confidence to get outside and try new things, if they’re able to, Krisher said. Volunteers can also share information with passengers, like explaining other services offered by Sound Generations or things to do at their nearest senior center.
“Volunteers play a huge role in building that trust, being respectful of the person and their expectations and experiences,“ Krisher said. “Just having one or two individuals that are really there for the person can have such a strong impact.”
The passengers aren’t the only ones who benefit, Lach said. Many of Sound Generations’ volunteer drivers are older than 60, and experience many of the same mental and physical challenges as the people they drive.
“For (volunteer drivers) as well, that may be their only opportunity to socialize,” Lach said. “They’re providing more than just rides, but also support and understanding and sympathy and empathy, which go a long way.”
For 79-year-old Capitol Hill resident Bob Knudson, joining the volunteer transportation program 25 years ago has helped him find a purpose in life after retiring from a career as a pediatrician. The rides, he said, are a “win-win,” helping people access essential medical care while building friendships between drivers and passengers. This is especially true with one of his regulars, 90-year-old Erma Marvin.
“Good morning, Bobby!” Marvin called out one foggy December morning after stepping out of the front door of her Shoreline home. Knudson looped his arm with Marvin’s as he carefully helped her walk down her front steps and to his car.
Before finding the volunteer transportation program 10 years ago, Marvin said getting rides to appointments from friends or family was almost impossible. Getting rides from Knudson helps her feel independent and more connected to “the outside world,” she said.
“Up until I found them, I was really struggling,” she said from the front passenger seat of Knudson’s car. “It takes all the stress and pressure off knowing Bob will be there.”
The pair traded stories about their families and how they spent Thanksgiving on the way to Seattle’s Northwest Outpatient Medical Center. After Marvin’s appointment, Knudson held Marvin’s hand and helped her walk down the hallway, pausing along the way to let her catch her breath.
“You don’t think about it when you’re young, but to get up, get dressed and get out of the house can be really hard,” she said. “I can’t say how much people like Bob mean to people like me, that they go the extra mile and do it with a smile.”
For volunteer driver Susan Cady, the transportation program helped her find a way to continue giving back, even as her mobility decreased.
After retiring, Cady gave up long biking trips and playing the bassoon because her body and hands could no longer take the strain. And she had to stop volunteering at Seattle’s Lake City Food Bank because lifting heavy boxes took too great a toll on her back. When she saw a Sound Generations pamphlet advertising the volunteer transportation program three years ago, she knew it would be a good fit.
“I thought, ‘I can drive,’” Cady said on a drizzly November morning while driving to Linda Dee’s apartment in Seattle’s View Ridge neighborhood near University of Washington. “And there’s a tremendous amount of need out there.”
Dee, one of Cady’s first passengers, started using the transportation program about three years ago, when a shoulder surgery made it too painful for her to drive. Since meeting Cady, the pair have become friends, bonding over a similar dry and sarcastic sense of humor.
Cady and Dee traded friendly barbs as they navigated to The Polyclinic in downtown Seattle, Dee marveling at new buildings flashing past her rain-flecked window. Once inside the clinic, Cady got herself a cup of coffee to sip while she waited for Dee to come back down the elevator.
Being at the clinic and spending time with Dee are reminders to be appreciative of what she can still do, Cady said.
“I think of it as paying it forward and collecting my Brownie points for later, because I may need the service at some point,” she said. “I think a lot of times we feel helpless, like we can’t do a lot to change things that you see wrong, and this is a small way you can make a difference.”
Correction: Sound Generations manages five senior centers and offers affordable meals at 20 locations. A previous version of this story inaccurately identified researcher Amanda Krisher.
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