She is at Billy and Mr. Bill’s house at 6:00 am.
Monday through Friday, 6:00 am, she is there.
I never have to think twice about it.
She comes in, she wakes them up with
her Cruz smile and her Cruz spirit.
Hello!
Good morning!
Hiya, lady!
I was the clinical manager for Billy’s case for many years.
I remember coming to the house.
I loved going there, first of all.
The Andersons are wonderful, wonderful people.
I remember thinking, you know, sometimes
the right person shows up at the
right place at the right time,
and for this family it was Cruz.
Billy is wheelchair-bound, so that
is a lift and a transfer for Cruz.
And she gets him ready for day program.
Mrs. Anderson told me that when Billy was born,
the doctors told her, “You can never have him home.
You can’t raise him home. He’ll be too much for you.”
Mrs. Anderson told them
over her dead body.
She used that term a few times
and kept him home.
When it was time for Billy to go to school,
she fought the Board of Ed so that Billy could go
to regular school, even for a short while,
so that he could have that experience.
She broke the mold.
She was a force to be reckoned with.
That's my wife before she passed away.
She died in June.
I'm so sorry.
Right there, see her with the dog?
When Ms. Mary passed away, she showed up
and she still came to work and she did her job,
if not better than she did
before for Billy and Mr. Bill.
I miss the hell out of her, I know that.
She was a little Italian girl from Long Island.
I knew I had problems after our wedding.
We passed Yankee Stadium, and she says to me,
“What’s that?” I said, “Holy mackerel!
I got something going here!”
I hate the Yankees.
I hope Mr. Baiada's not a Yankee fan.
Billy gets picked up,
goes to the day program around 8:39.
around 9:00 am, that is Cruz and Mr. Bill time.
We are going to go do shopping.
Is Cruz a good shopping partner?
Oh, you wait and see.
You better have your running shoes on.
Cruz made it a point to take him out
the days that he would not get up.
He would just stay in the sofa
and not go anywhere and go to sleep,
So, Cruz would be the one, “Oh, Mr. Anderson, we’ve got to go out.
Let’s go out. Let’s go somewhere.”
So, he would go with her to shop,
to the park, or walk around, then come home.
And then she did encourage him to talk about his wife,
and look at pictures, and have those
memories to allow him to grieve.
At 11:00 am, Cruz goes back home
for about three hours.
She takes her break.
And there was this one day where I asked her,
I said, “Cruz, what do you do on your break?”
She said, “Well, I clean the house,
and then I start cooking dinner.”
And I'm like okay Cruz, that’s not a break, but sure.
I wonder sometimes, when does she care for herself?
Because she’s always working.
She’s always caring for all the people.
It doesn’t phase her. She’s just a person that’s like,
“No, we just have to care for people. That’s what we do.”
And then at 2:30, she goes back to the house
to Billy and Mr. Bill’s, and she starts prepping dinner.
Okay, we're going to go tell her.
You won national hero. Yeah, you won!
You won for the whole year!
I turn to Mr. Bill, and he goes,
"Oh I knew it. I knew it this whole time."
Of all the aides that I’ve dealt
with, since we’ve been dealing with BAYADA
and all the other agencies,
nobody would come close to Cruz.
There’s no second.
She has never let me down in nine years.
There was this one moment where
Cruz locked eyes with Billy, and
she put her head on his head, just to thank him.
And I thought, “Oh, man. We are doing it right.
She deserves everything and more
because she is thanking Billy
when we’re all just thanking her.”
Cruz deserves every ounce,
every ounce of recognition every day
because she keeps people safe,
because she keeps people happy,
and because her spirit never wavers in her job.
A hero is somebody who puts the
needs of another above their own.
That's a hero. That's a real hero.
So Cruz has my vote.
She’s beyond.
Beyond being a hero.
She’s beyond being our employee.
She’s just a great person.
She’s a great human being.
And she pushes me every day, too.
Just seeing her, and how she is, and how selfless she is.
They don’t come like this anymore.
So, we cherish what we have.
I think that BAYADA should be proud to have
a caregiver like her.
And that’s why she deserves it.
She deserves it all.
I don’t think that anyone could
care for a client like Cruz does.
I come to do something for you.
I’m happy to come.
You are my best friend.
Yeah.
You know that.
You are not alone.
You will never be alone.
While I live, I’ll be here with you.
I would like, you know, to have the right words
because it's hard.
The other day he told me, "Cruz,
I would like to walk."
I didn't know what to say.
Some people, we have legs.
We have hands. We have everything.
But you know what?
They don't know how to use it.
They don't know.
They don't know what they have.
But, you are so beautiful.
I am here with you.
I am your legs.
Jim and I first met when I was 21.
I worked with his sister and one night, she said,
“Let’s go to New Hope and we’ll go on a ghost tour.”
Ghost Tours of New Hope.
And she said, “Oh, I’m gonna bring my brother,”
and I’m like, “Oh, is he hot?”
I saw a picture of him and it’s when
he had his mustache and I'm like, “Oh. That’s a shame.”
But then, we met in the center of New Hope
and all of a sudden, I saw this strapping young man
running down the sidewalk and she goes,
“Oh, that’s my brother,” and I went, “Ooh.”
We went on a ghost tour and then
we had drinks that night and then we just hit it off.
And I always say, "And it’s been scary every since."
We didn't really have a lot of time together
in a normal married situation.
We had just moved into our house.
It was the 5th of December.
We made settlement and on the 9th of December,
we found out that he had something really
wrong with himself.
Some kind of major neurological problem.
They said, “You either have a brain tumor,
or you had a stroke, or you have ALS.”
And so four days into a mortgage, this is what we heard.
We still decided that we wanted to have kids.
After five years of trying to call it something else,
they realized that it was ALS.
Jim was always such a healthy, strong man.
He was a healthy eater.
He was an exerciser.
He was a fitness instructor.
He was first in his class in his army and he motivated me
and it kept me going.
When he started to get weak, it was just unreal.
It was unreal for somebody of his level of fitness
to come down with this kind of a disease.
Being a physical therapist,
it’s ironic because it was the one thing
that I just couldn’t help him with.
The one thing that you can't fix.
Our mornings are completely rushed
because the three of us love to sleep.
After you guys get dropped off,
do you know what your mom’s doing today?
She takes care of people.
Say, "Congratulations, mom."
Congrats, mommy!
Congrats, mom!
Bye, mom.
Bye, honey. I love you guys.
I love you, too.
Have a great day, okay?
Bye, mom. I love you.
Bye, I love you.
Thank you. Bye.
So, we just dropped them off,
and I head up to Brig O’Doon Coffee Shop,
and I get a cup of coffee for me and Jim
Hi! How are ya?
I'm paying this guy to follow me with a camera.
I went through a lot of jobs,
and I’ve always put 100% into
any job I’ve ever had.
But nursing is my niche, and I love that
and I love—I love people.
This is her life now. This is her passion
and I think it took her this long—
to find her niche, yeah.
To find her niche and some people find their
niche right out of high school.
They go to college.
With her, it just took a little bit
of time for her to find that.
She found it. She’s in love with it.
I think she’s just in love with her job.
I really do.
It’s not like having a nurse with these patients.
It’s like having a best friend with them.
Liz is Jim's best friend,
and he will say that and it is 100% true.
She brings life.
Liz brings life to them
and they have such a great time.
The humor between the two of them.
She treats them like they’re not sick.
She treats them like they’re without their disability,
and it’s a really beautiful thing to see.
You can’t teach somebody to do that.
That has to be within every fiber of their being.
And you have to—
I'm getting the chills right now,
because you have to see it
to really understand it.
As soon as she appears, it's a good day.
Thanks, Jim.
How proud are you guys that you raised a daughter that is so—
Oh, my God, words can’t really say.
It’s a neat thing.
You’re going to make me cry.
Don’t do that. Don’t do that.
Liz and I—in the teenage years—
had very difficult times, you know,
just combatting heads because she was a teenager and
Liz calls me every day.
Every day.
Yeah, she does.
And I know thousands of mothers
out there go through that.
They know exactly what I’m talking about
and now I have this daughter,
she calls me every day, every day.
It’s kind of nice to have
a best friend in your daughter.
You want somebody who’s actually adding
to the experience of your life
because you keep living while you’re
on a ventilator at home.
And you keep adding to Jim’s life.
You know, how he is right now.
You make him laugh, you make me laugh,
you make everybody laugh.
And that’s, first and foremost—
I mean besides the clinical skills.
I’d like for you to keep my husband alive when I’m—
I can try and do that.
When I’m not here. But
laughter is a big, important thing in our lives.
And to find somebody who can keep
us laughing is priceless.
I feel like you just bring happiness
and joy into our home.
Thank you.
I love you.
I love you, too.
ALS is a horrible, horrible disease
and if we were to take life seriously and really think
about our situation, we would be crying.
You can sit there and think about what you don’t have
anymore or you can take each day
as you have it.
The real heroes are like Liz and many others, like my wife.
To quote Robert Duvall in Lonesome Dove,
today is done and we can’t get it back.
There’s always tomorrow.
Enjoy the little things that are left.
Liz does that in her nursing and spreads the message on.
I used to be emotionally free, but lately,
I have been having trouble keeping
those emotions at bay.
Liz has helped me through that
and given me my steady hand.
Any strong man can fall apart at any time,
and there’s a Liz who helps you stand again,
without the need for payment back.
That's why Liz is a hero.
Nothing in return is ever expected
And when I see her I smile.
Who is Mat Gunkel?
Well, he's my best friend.
Mat is my younger brother.
He's a calming soul.
He has a gentleness about him
that I think's rare in people.
A part of the family.
He gives Dominic the attention that
a 15, 16-year-old kid deserves and wants and desires.
Is Mr. Mat your best buddy?
Yeah. Yeah.
When I first met him, he had this teeny little
red Rifton bike, and he used to
fly around on that thing.
And that was when he was actually starting to
go through a growth spurt.
And during that time, he outgrew everything.
He outgrew his stander,
He outgrew his gait trainer,
and then he outgrew his bicycle.
Growing up, I always flew around
on my bike as a kid.
I know how important it is to kids,
and an adaptive bike for him
was like $5,000.00.
And so insurance covers his gait trainer,
insurance covers his new bed,
but the bike doesn't get covered.
You know, and it was right around that time where
he also developed Type 1 diabetes
in addition to everything else he had going on.
It’s hard to talk about that because—
him getting diabetes—because he
already had a rough shake.
And kind of in my mind, I knew I had to
get him back on a bike, because
it relaxes his tone, his spasticity.
When he rides a bike, he could actually
relax when he’s done.
Mat had decided that he was going to
spearhead a fundraising campaign
for Dominic to get this bike and he—
he basically told me he wasn't
going to stop until it happened.
My brother, when he decided that he
thought that Dominic needed a bike,
he was on a warpath.
I set up a GoFundMe page,
and it just kind of took off,
and people are coming from all over the place.
I mean, it was just my friends and family,
their friends and family, people that knew him,
people that didn’t know him.
I called everybody, anybody I could.
I reached out to Channel 6 News.
I reached out to local businesses.
He didn't give up, he didn't surrender,
and he just kept pounding the doors.
I’m like, I cannot believe the outpouring of help.
When everything was said and done,
my brother Dave came in.
He just walked in with the last $100 bill,
and it put him right over the final price,
plus $50 to get him adaptive gloves.
And I just—I couldn’t believe it.
The night that we reached the goal,
he lost it.
He was like practically bouncing off the walls.
It wasn’t even for him. It was for Dominic.
Who does that for something that’s not even for them?
There’s just something about him
that just makes you want to do good things.
He did it because he knew that it was
going to be beneficial for Dominic.
How do you thank somebody for doing that?
How do you let them know how much you appreciate them?
The only way I thought of trying to
thank him was by nominating him for this award.
Mat is so selfless.
He would do what you need him to do
if you asked him, in a heartbeat.
He's a hero in my eyes.
He's an amazing person in my life.
He's just my best friend
He's like—I've known him since I was 13,
and I—we've been together about 20 years,
and I love you.
I love you too, Laurie.
You're a very special person, and
I couldn't imagine my life without you.
If everybody was as kind and understanding
as Mat, this world would just be a fantastic place.
I have lots of pride for Mat,
and it makes me really happy to know that—
see, I believed that people that did good things
but that weren't on the top would never get noticed.
I was wrong.
That's it.
I'm happy to see finally someone that's so nice,
and good things for people,
getting noticed for a change.
When we’re out there together,
we get to let go of everything that’s going on
and just be in the moment.
There's nothing better.
I told Matt that anything in life,
you get caught up in what it is and in the moment.
And I said that life is so short, enjoy it.
Don’t stress about it because you’re going to look back
and wish that you had enjoyed that moment
when everybody could look at him
and see what a great guy he is.
Take that five minutes and enjoy it because
it will be gone like this.
Take a drink, calm your nerves, and enjoy it
because it’s one of those once in a
lifetime moments that will stay with you.
You earned it. That's yours, Mat.
Breakfast casseroles. This one is
parmesan bagels with artichoke hearts and goat cheese,
and the other one is chorizo and
shredded southwest potatoes and cheese and eggs.
Even in her circle of friends, she was always the one—
the planner for like whatever they were doing—
if it was someone's birthday.
No, she doesn't like being the center of attention,
but she definitely likes doing things for other people.
She definitely has that gift.
I learned a lot about Kerri's love for people
just from listening to all the things that
she’s done for other people.
Kerri and her wife Kate often held these
therapy get-togethers at their own home.
She would have a happy hour there.
She made food, and it was important to her to
make sure that the team all felt included.
They were all on the same page,
and they felt a comradery to make sure the team was
always first and foremost.
Kerri does those things
because she’s a natural at it.
It’s in her, and that's a true testimony
to Kerri's personality and how she just draws people to her.
I don’t think Kerri recognizes it as much
as the rest of the people do.
We are building a float for a Mardi Gras parade
at one of the communities that we
see patients at. So the Green Valley team
is coming, and then the program managers
from Tucson and Green Valley.
It's going to be based on more BAYADA colors,
and then we're going to add stuff to make it
work for Mardi Gras.
I guess they go all out, so
we're trying to win the competition.
I was working in Florida in an outpatient clinic
and got an opportunity for the job at Fort Huachuca.
It was a bit of a culture shock going down.
It’s very small,
and we were both working in the same physical therapy clinic,
so that’s how we met.
I didn’t really know anyone.
She didn’t know anyone.
We were kind of the only single people in the area.
For me, personally, I am immediately attracted to an
empathetic and compassionate person.
And she just kind of demonstrates that
in every aspect of her life.
I met her three years ago.
She was working in Fort Huachuca.
I didn’t know she was the main PT.
And I went in, and I said,
“Well, why don’t you do it this way?”
And then, she looked at me,
and she goes, “Oh.”
Two seconds later, somebody,
one of the soldiers says, “Dr. Tuttle.”
And I go, “Oops.”
And I’m like, oh my God, I just made a fool of myself.
I apologized, and she laughed
and she goes, “No, I kinda liked it. You're not afraid."
And so we started working together as a team.
Well, it’s one of the reasons I switched to BAYADA
because it wasn’t the philosophy when I was working on post.
It was, "Okay, you just need to see more
and more because we see what you can do."
I tried everything to get around that
because I really enjoyed treating the soldiers
and that was important to me.
She came in and asked me if I could put together
a full-time offer for her and what it would like.
And I said, “Of course.” And I was excited
because Kerri was a great fit for BAYADA.
And I had an offer ready the very next day.
And she looked at it, and she said,
“Well, what if I just signed this right now?”
And I just thought,
I think I might wet my pants.
I was so excited to get somebody of her quality
into our office.
You have to do what makes you happy, too, and
I couldn’t help people there the way I wanted to anymore.
So, it was time to move on.
When you are a PTA, you want to find that PT
that you click with because everything is beautiful.
I mean you learn, they learn.
So, I've only been working with BAYADA for about seven months now,
and I actually had my interview with Kerri.
And now I'm actually really excited
to work with her because being an assistant,
it's pretty rare to have someone that
is so engaged and willing to teach you
and willing to put everything into
making you a better clinician.
Anytime I get a patient on the
phone, I always ask to make sure that they’re happy,
and they’re getting everything they need.
Every single patient, even the most difficult of patients,
just rave about Kerri.
She’s the epitome of the perfect clinician.
To be able to flip into a completely different population
and demonstrate the exact same amount of care and passion,
that’s everything that I think medicine should be.
It should be something that you did
because you care about people and
you really want the best for them.
When she came in here,
there was something that just hit me.
You knew, from the get-go, she cared
and you knew that she would
always do what she was trained to do.
But Kerri went above and beyond that caring.
It’s one of the harder cases I’ve had to work on.
Watching her just worry about Terri like she
was a family member it was heartbreaking,
but it was also really eye-opening, too,
because not very many people have that
kind of empathy that you can—
you can’t train that into a person.
That's just part of who she is.
She deals with me working way too much
and answering phone calls or emails or texts
at all sorts of hours and
knows that some people don’t have
anyone else out there to help.
I think that she worries that her care and concern
for other people takes up some kind of room.
Whether it’s even just on a
marital scale or a family scale.
And I think that what she doesn’t necessarily
always remember is that she has more than
enough compassion and empathy and concern
and that's part of what keeps her going,
so nobody feels shorted
because she cares about her patients so much.
There's plenty of Kerri to share.
Coming from a military background, you have this mentality,
I guess, of heroes being these muscly people
whether they’re male or female.
These aren’t the people that are, you know,
storming the gates with weapons.
They're not fortifying our borders.
The people that are going out talking to
everyday people and finding out their needs.
And that is what really makes a difference in a person’s life.
You just need to be able to pay attention to
every single person that you interact with,
and take an opportunity to do something
kind, and I think that is a lost art in today's society.
People just genuinely caring about every single person
that they interact with.
And doing whatever they can—
maybe they can’t do everything—
but, they can do whatever they can,
and that’s pretty heroic to me.