Last Year, Over 200 Volunteers Helped Us Deliver VNS Health’s Mission. Meet Six of Them.
This week is National Volunteer Week, when we honor the committed individuals who donate their time, energy and compassion to VNS Health and our mission.
In 2024, 221 volunteers in Home Care and Hospice dedicated 21,948 hours to supporting our patients, families, and team members. In dollars, this comes out to about $735,000 in estimated savings to the organization. Our volunteers play a vital role across many different parts of VNS Health, including our Chinatown NNORC and Community Centers, Hospice Patient Care teams, Intake, Finance and Business Operations, Bereavement, and our Hospice Physician Fellowship Program. Our volunteers provide companionship to patients, make check-in calls to caregivers, support bereavement groups, send uplifting greeting cards, assist with office tasks, participate in veteran outreach, and much more.
This week, we invite you to join us in thanking our volunteers for their generous gifts of time and commitment to the people we serve.
Now, let’s meet six of our extraordinary volunteers!
Lily Alaj: Sharing Simple Joys at the End of Life
Lily Alaj began volunteering with VNS Health in late 2023, after discovering the opportunity through VolunteerMatch. As an employee of Johnson & Johnson, where employees are encouraged to give back, Lily was drawn to the idea of making a difference by becoming a VNS Health hospice volunteer. At the same time, though, she was hesitant about volunteering for hospice service. “I was worried about the emotional toll,” she explains. “But after completing the training, I decided to go for it.”
Lily was matched with a woman in her early 90s who was living in a Brooklyn nursing home. The patient had severe dementia. Despite her memory loss, the patient vividly recalled her early life from the 1930s to the 1950s. For nearly a year, Lily visited the patient weekly. Each meeting felt like a fresh introduction. Through simple activities like painting her nails and braiding her hair, Lily and the patient formed a genuine connection.
One of Lily’s fondest memories of the woman was her sharp sense of humor and outspoken nature. When the patient passed away just minutes before Lily arrived for a visit, she got to say goodbye and fulfill a final promise she had made to the patient—painting her friend’s nails one last time.
“I thought it would be scary, but it was the most natural thing in the world. It allowed me to have closure,” she reflects. Inspired by their bond, Lily remains committed to volunteering. “It’s such important work, and I want to continue for as long as I can.”
Tyler Bazzelle: Linking Veterans with Essential Resources
A junior at Monroe College, Tyler Bazzelle volunteered as an intern during the second half of 2024, working in the Veterans Program. Tyler’s main job was to reach out to veterans within the VA Healthcare System and make sure they received the resources they needed in regard to housing, medical bills, and transportation.
While the task was daunting at first, Tyler says he received strong support from his VNS Health supervisors, who helped him navigate his role with confidence. “I’d never done this type of thing before,” he notes, “so I was nervous about the process. But my supervisors really helped me keep it simple. I appreciated that a lot.”
As a VNS Health volunteer, Tyler gained valuable interpersonal and customer service skills, preparing him for a future career in health care. (Tyler’s college major is healthcare administration.) Tyler says the opportunity to hear veterans’ stories left a lasting impression on him. “Veterans love to chat about their service and their past. I heard so many inspiring stories about the greatness of people in general.”
For Tyler, the most rewarding part of his internship was receiving calls from veterans thanking him for his help. ” The conversations I had with veterans were incredibly meaningful,” says Tyler.
Corina Wong: Helping Seniors Master New Skills
For the past decade, Corina Wong, who for 41 years worked in banking, has been a VNS Health volunteer. Today, she volunteers her time and energy to teaching English and leading a weekly knitting and crocheting class at the Sunset Park Community Center in Brooklyn.
“The students are so eager to learn, and they’re always very engaged,” Corina explains.
Her English class is made up of community members over the age of 65. Corina focuses on practical language skills and pronunciation, which are taught through relaxed, conversational lessons.
“This is not a strict classroom,” notes Corina. “We read books, ask questions, and interact. It’s a chance for us to come together, socialize, make friends, and laugh. It’s not just study, study, study.”
The students’ enthusiasm keeps Corina coming back week after week. “They are very attentive, and I love the interactions, the laughter, and the personal touch of our conversations. It’s truly rewarding to see their progress and confidence grow.”
Sally Dankas: Sharing Hospice Patients’ Final Moments
Sally Dankas began volunteering with VNS Health a year ago, inspired by her experience caring for her mother at the end of her life. Sally’s mother, who was a hospice nurse, instilled in her the belief that being with someone in their final moments is an invaluable gift.
Sally visits two hospice patients regularly in Brooklyn. One of them, a woman living in a skilled nursing facility, used to love to cook but now has no access to a kitchen. Sally helped the patient reconnect with her passion by assembling ingredients together, taking everything to her home to bake, and then bringing back a slice to share. They are now planning on making potato salad as a summer project!
Sally’s other patient enjoys singing, and the two of them sing together during every visit.
Sally also participates in “vigil volunteering,” ensuring that patients nearing death are not alone. She finds joy in seeing patients brighten through their interactions with her.
“The key to volunteering is being present and adaptable,” says Sally. “Hospice volunteering is a special and meaningful way to support people at the end of life.”
Min Zhi Chen: Helping Seniors Stay Connected Through Technology
Min Zhi Chen retired from her job as a home health aide more than 10 years ago, but her passion for helping others remains strong. At the Flushing Community Center, she teaches a weekly mobile phone class for seniors, most of whom primarily speak Chinese.
“Many of them only know how to make a phone call. They don’t know how to use WeChat, download apps, send emails, or adjust basic settings on their phones,” she explains.
Min Zhi remembers the time she helped a 99-year-old man learn how to connect to Wi-Fi and send text, email and WeChat messages to his children. “He didn’t know anything about how to use his phone beyond making calls. But after our lesson, he was able to send messages to his son and daughter. It was amazing to see his excitement.”
For Min Zhi, the goal is simple: to empower seniors with the technology they need to stay connected with their loved ones and with the world around them. “I want them to be able to reach out to their friends and family, and to not feel isolated,” she says. “It’s a small effort on my part, but it makes a big difference in their lives.”
Pam Spritzer: Building Connection Through Shared Humanity
Pam Spritzer began her volunteer journey with a deeply personal experience—caring for her aging parents. “I discovered that, almost effortlessly, I could make an enormous difference in the quality of their day,” she recalls.
After her father passed away in 2011, Pam was drawn to hospice work, motivated both by a desire to improve the quality of the end of life for others as she had done for her parents, and by an aspiration to reorient society’s approach to mortality. “We exert so much effort to deny death and sequester it from life. I wanted to play my small part in changing that,” she explains.
Since then, Pam has volunteered primarily with hospice patients, carefully selecting individuals who could benefit from their shared interests. She reads to patients, converses in French with those who speak the language, and even helps with computer issues! But above all, she believes patients benefit from her compassionate presence, no matter their interests or mindset.
For Pam, the ability to create profound connections is one of the most rewarding aspects of her volunteer work. Her relationships with patients range from brief encounters to months-long connections, but she cherishes the immediacy and depth of each bond. As she says, “One of the many striking and satisfying aspects of this work is that at the end of life, intimacy arises incredibly quickly.”