Hoorays For The Valets!

We would like to thank Yonatan Teklai and Kudus Ghebreslasie, part of the team of valets working at Veterans Administration Hospital in Seattle, for their help last week to an elderly veteran.
Why is the valet service so important? Imagine that you have trouble walking and are coming to VAH/Seattle for medical care. When you get to the main entrance, what are you going to do with your car? If you park in the lot, you have a long uphill walk into the building. If you're in a wheelchair, it's a difficult push!
To help out with this problem, valet parking has been available at VAH/Seattle ever since we got funding for it, and apart from an organizational hitch around New Years', it's been working pretty well. We don't have exact numbers, but from the samples we've observed whenever we visit, there must be several hundred veterans being served every business day! That's hundreds of veterans getting the practical help they need at the start of the process, in getting from their cars into the building.
Here's a true story. Last week we were helping a veteran who is unable to maneuver his wheelchair on his own. He got out at the main entrance and the valets parked his car while his wife took him to see the doctor.
When it was time to go home, she was prepared to wheel him to their car, but it can be difficult to take a chair down the hill safely. Also it can be hard to get from a wheelchair into a parked car when there are other cars parked next to it. Finally, the weather here in Seattle is often too wet for the comfort and safety of fragile elderly people to be out in.
No problem. Yonatan and Kudus were right there and went into action. One of them went to get the car, and then they both helped the veteran in and stowed his wheelchair. The veteran and his wife didn't have to fight the hill, the other parked cars or the weather; their departure from VAH/Seattle was just that much safer and that much faster.
We reserve the right to complain when things don't work, but that gives us the responsibility to praise when things do go right. On behalf of the veterans and their families who they have helped, we say to the Valets of the VA: THANKS!

Welcome Dane Olsen

The Seattle VA Hospital has a new Customer Service Manager: Mr. Dane Olsen. He's so new there that he doesn't have a business card to hand out or an official photo for us to post, but he met with two members of Veterans and Friends of Puget Sound last week in the PA's office.
We were duly impressed with his commitment to getting the best possible care to America's veterans who have earned it. We frankly pummeled him with questions, which he calmly received and then responded appropriately to.
Mr. Olsen is an Airborne Veteran of Operation Just Cause, the 1989 invasion of Panama. Apart from his evident fondness for jumping out of a perfectly good airplane to get shot at, he seems like a reasonable guy. If you see him in the halls of the hospital, why not step up, introduce yourself and talk with him a bit?
Veterans and Friends looks forward to working with him!