LIHUE — Sye Chee is the social services director at Hale Kupuna Heritage Home, a nursing home in Omao, and in the past several years she has touched the hearts of the people she serves.
“Whenever she enters a room, you can see the faces of our residents light up,” Bronson Ho, administrator of Hale Kupuna, wrote in a letter to the Healthcare Association of Hawaii, nominating Chee for the “Professional With Heart” award. Chee received the award in October at a gala honoring her along with 13 other healthcare workers in the state for their exemplary service.
“She goes above and beyond the call of duty,” Ho said in an interview. “She puts her heart into everything she does for our residents.”
Once, Chee learned that the husband of one of her patients was home alone with no one to care for him. After repeated phone calls to the home went unanswered, Chee asked police to check in on the elderly man. Officers reported back that he was OK but only had a loaf of bread in his refrigerator, so Chee went out on her own and bought groceries, filling his fridge with the kinds of food she knew her own grandparents would have liked.
Then she went even further, contacting the county’s Agency on Elderly Affairs to make sure he would have regular assistance, and set him up with the Meals on Wheels program.
Later, the man passed away, leaving behind a beloved family dog with no caretaker. Rather than allowing the dog to go to a shelter, Chee adopted the animal so that her patient could continue to visit her best friend.
Another resident at Hale Kupuna was wheelchair-bound and no longer physically capable of surfing, a sport that had been a huge part of his life. Some of the staff were brainstorming ways to make the man feel better, thinking they might put up pictures of the ocean in his room or show him surfing videos.
“And Sye just took it to the next level,” said one co-worker, who described how Chee, on her day off, took the man out to the North Shore to participate in a program that helps people with disabilities get back out on the water.
“That’s therapy,” the co-worker said, laughing. “She’s a therapist and doesn’t even know it!”
“I think if you treat them like your own grandma and grandpa, it helps them feel like this is their home,” Chee said.
Chee remembers when she was growing up, her grandfather instructed her to always take care of the old, the sick and the poor. If you do those things, God is going to bless you, he told her. “And I do, I feel blessed,” she said.
“I guess I really want the residents to enjoy being here. For a lot of them this is the last place they’re going to be,” she said. “When I go to bed, I know did something good for somebody.”
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Caleb Loehrer, staff writer, can be reached at 245-0441 or cloehrer@thegardenisland.com.
