At the tender age of 47 and having worked only in the healthcare field, I found myself at a crossroads. You see, even though I had been working full-time since the age of 19 with the elderly, and even made it to executive level, I had no formal qualifications. So I decided to go back to college and began my associates degree in healthcare management. After two long years I succeeded, I had no idea I was capable of actually being able to study, but I was, I did, and even enjoyed it (most of the time). I now found myself wondering what to do next, my degree was nice to have, but lets face it, not much use in finding a job. I decided to continue on to my bachelor’s, this would be much more helpful and I still had plenty to learn. So here’s where it gets a bit sticky, did I want to do healthcare administration or something different? I love the assisted living community, but I really wanted to look into helping the elderly at risk, so I started to look into criminal justice. After researching and speaking with my advisors I decided to switch majors and go with criminal justice. Now that my major is different, my searches for information changed, and I suddenly found myself looking into this world of elderly prisoners with dementia. It had never even crossed my mind, in all these years that there was an elderly population such as this, and yet when you think about it, of course there is. When offenders are sentenced to life without parole, that’s what they get.
So now I need to find out as much as I can about this particular prison population and what I can do to be a part of it and help those who need me.
Heather Stauffer, REALTOR®, SRES® 