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 My Story: 

Why I am in Senior Home Care

My journey to make home care proactive started with three seeds

I found myself in Silicon Valley backstage at the Health 2.0 conference, ready to take the main stage in front of a crowd of hundreds. I peered between an opening of two curtains and had a glimpse of the stage and the crowd, but something else caught my eye.  It was not the camera man that would be directly in my face, I had been on other stages and gotten used to that by now.  I looked up for some reason and shining directly on the spot where I was to talk was a bright lime green light, shining and flickering like a star.  Was this what they meant by lime light?  I started thinking about all the things that led me here and right before they called my name to get on stage, I thought about the reason I started in senior home care, my grandmother and a fond memory I had of her, it relaxed me. Then I heard, “CEO, Anthony Nunez.”

 

 

My journey really began when I was in elementary school.  My father worked for a large company during the week, but was very entrepreneurial and worked from home on the weekends on other jobs he created for himself.  One weekend, while I was helping him work on a car, we were under the hood and he looked at me and he said to make sure I work for myself.  As most kids do when they get advice at this age, you just nod your head and do not think much of it.  But it was at that moment the first seed was planted.  That seed alone would not get me going, I would need a focus.

All through my childhood, we would travel to Rhode Island to go see my grandmother.  She lived alone and was fiercely independent.  She had escaped WW2 in Europe and migrated here to the United States and started a family.  She was very tough but gentle at the same time.  We had a great relationship, I always looked up to her.  One day when I was in high school, we got news that she had fallen down and been on the floor for a couple days before neighbors noticed her mail piling up.  My mother was very upset and I could tell she was very worried around this time.  The last time we were up there to see her, we helped sell my grandmother’s car.  I felt bad because I remember how sad it made her.  My mom went up to go see my grandmother and the next week brought her back to live in Arlington County with us.

My mom was working full time and also had part time jobs as well during this time.  We had to hire outside help, we needed to get senior home care.  It was expensive so we were only able to get it a couple times a week.  I would notice how reactive it was, one day she would have a scratch on her nose from falling and other days she was really inactive, senior home care always seemed to be a step behind. I was watching my grandmother slowly loose her independence and felt helpless.  It was here that the second seed was planted for me, I did not realize it at the time but I was experiencing something millions of families go through and there was nothing that could help.

I was majoring in a technical subject at George Mason University in Fairfax County, learning that I loved to create robots that moved and accomplished a task.  I had built multiple robots by this point but it was not enough. I wanted to create a much larger robot that addressed something that would make a difference.  I found a funding source on campus that funded projects and would offer you an opportunity to present the project at a conference at the university.  I presented my concept to them, a robot that would help disabled students carry their books while they navigated campus. They accepted the project and I built the robot. I remember the satisfaction I got once it was completed and how the purpose of the robot motivated me to work around obstacles to finish the project.  It was here that the final seed was planted, I loved creating things that would help people.  It would take a few more years and meeting many other people with older parents and hearing their stories about their challenges before it would become clear.  I wanted to build something that would change how senior home care was done so that no other families would experience the untimely loss of an older family member.



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