After Home Instead® Care Professional of the Month Debra Falcon’s client passed away, the client’s family insisted on including Debra at the funeral service, where Debra was mentioned in the eulogy. A family member told the mourners, “Without Debra, Mom just wouldn’t be happy.” Later, family members took Debra aside and told her, “We couldn’t repay you for everything you did for Mom.”
Emotion pulsing through her words, Debra reminisced about her client, who passed away in November 2022. “I will never forget her. She was like a second mother to me. She’d say, ‘You’re my best friend.’ She was very caring. That made me feel good and meant a lot. I valued her wisdom. When my client celebrated her 90th birthday at her party in March 2022, her family invited me, and my client made sure that I went to her party.”
“Debra recalled her unexpected final day with her client about seven months after the birthday party. “A voice inside told me something didn’t seem right. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it,” Debra explained. “I told her, ‘Maybe you’ll feel better in the morning,’ and I prepared her dinner meal before I left. She hugged me as I left for the day. We told each other, ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’ I had no inkling I’d never see her again. She collapsed at 10 that evening as the result of a stroke and was on life support for a month before she passed away in peace.”
Debra added, “When she was lonely, it broke my heart, so we worked at keeping her active. I prepared her meals, and she insisted I eat breakfast with her. After breakfast, she often wanted to go for a drive and loved Home Depot and Lowe’s, where she looked for plants. She had a backyard with a hillside with rose bushes and other plants. Under her direction, I did the work with gardening even though I have ‘a black thumb.’ However, I had her backyard and porch looking pretty with plants, and she was proud of her backyard. She wanted a lemon tree from Home Depot, and she insisted on buying a second lemon tree for me. She also told me to take her lemon tree if she died, and her daughter made sure of it. It is quite a remembrance of her.”
Referring to her Care Pro position with Home Instead of Austin and Westlake Hills, Debra noted she has lost four clients during her two-plus years with the franchise. “It’s the only downside to this work. It always breaks my heart. My clients become like family, and they mean the world to me. I tend to get close to the clients. With my first employer many years ago, the feeling I got was that each senior was ‘just a job’ and I was told not to get close. Yes, it is a job, but in my heart, I feel for them and want to help. I also want to relieve the pressure on the client’s family.”
Debra hasn’t always worked in professional senior care, but when she entered that field in the late 1990s, she was hooked. “After I graduated from high school in 1985, I worked in an insurance office in San Marcos for about 12 or 13 years. Before coming to Home Instead, I had worked for several agencies. When I was working for another agency, my client died and there wasn’t another one available. The work had dried up. Someone recommended ZipRecruiter.com, and that’s how I found Home Instead,” Debra said.
Home Instead, co-owned by Pietro Jordao and Dillon Rice, has been a godsend for Debra. “Home Instead is very caring and flexible,” Debra said. “The office staff is always looking out for its employees. As a 56-year-old single mother with a teenage daughter, I love the fact that Home Instead understands my challenges and has told me that my family comes first. The staff knows it’s not an easy job. My salary is better than it was with the other agencies but, to me, the inner fulfillment is the big thing.”
Debra loves being a part of the Care Pro team for the Austin-area franchise, a member of a network comprised of Home Instead, Inc. and its parent company, Honor. With the world’s largest home-care network and the most advanced care platform, Honor and Home Instead are revolutionizing care for older adults, their families and Care Pros. Combined, the network has more than 100,000 Care Pros across 13 countries, meeting the growing needs of millions of older adults and their families worldwide.
Debra added: “I can’t see myself doing anything else than senior care. This is my niche in life.”
