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Ashlanders take to Adopt a Neighbor program By Joe Zavala of the Ashland Tidings Apr 07, 2020 06:18 PM A A 2 View all photos Jennifer Bagshaw looks forward to the day when she can meet the woman for whom she shops. She laughs about the idea of a big reveal, like something out of a reality TV show. But a face-to-face meeting may still be weeks or even months away. “The weirdest thing is I don’t know what they look like,” Bagshaw said of the woman for whom she has been shopping. “It’s like a clandestine drop and run.” Bagshaw is one of over 200 Ashlanders who have volunteered to shop for strangers who, given the threat of COVID-19, can’t shop for themselves. It’s part of the new Adopt a Neighbor Ashland program, which has taken off like a rocket since being rolled out about two weeks ago. The program, devised and built by a five-person team — former Ashland mayor Cathy Shaw, City Councilor Tonya Graham, Mica Cardillo, Chuck Keil and Blaire Finney — matches those in the coronavirus high-risk category with volunteers based on location. Once a person in need is matched with a volunteer, contact information, along with a detailed safe practices fact sheet, is sent to the volunteer, who takes it from there. As of Tuesday evening, 221 volunteer neighbors had signed up to shop and run errands, and of those, 45 had been matched with neighbors who requested help, according to Graham. The community-wide effort to track down and assist those most at risk from COVID-19 has quickly gained momentum, which was the hope. “Clearly, it’s one thing to have an idea and quite another to carry it out,” Shaw said via email. “And in this regard, the entirety of the team carried it out. ... We are quite simply a small group of volunteers who respect each other’s talents and honor each other’s contributions. We work well together with no chest thumping.” The city sent out a message through its emergency alert system April 1, asking those willing to help to sign up at adoptneighbor.org or call 541-552-2500. Many did, but the city’s database is limited to 7,864 text numbers, 2,900 email addresses and 2,024 voicemail subscribers at last count, according to Ashland public information officer Chris Chambers. There was no telling how many Ashlanders who could use the help weren’t aware such a service existed, but in an effort to help find them organizers turned to Senior Services Superintendent Isleen Glatt. “It was our hope that most people are going to be helped by their own network, and that’s wonderful,” Glatt said. “Yet we know that there are a lot of seniors who are solo aging — they don’t have a partner or they’ve outlived their partner. Maybe they’ve outlived most of their friend network, maybe they don’t have any adult children or they don’t have any that live nearby and can help, and that’s what this program is designed to help.” But first, Glatt and her team of two staffers and two volunteers had to find people who didn’t know they were being sought, a task that required a certain amount of detective work. To do that, Glatt’s team looked at the Rogue Valley Council of Government’s disaster registry, the Ashland Senior Center’s contact list and also checked for Ashlanders who had signed up for the Rogue Valley Transportation District’s Valley Lift program. Not all of the roughly 600 people on the Senior Center’s newsletter list — or the other lists Glatt had access to, for that matter — are especially vulnerable to COVID-19, but many are. “The other folks,” Glatt said, “we have phone numbers for all of those people, so this week we’ll be calling down that list to pluck out those people who need extra support from there. Some of them are quite independent and strong and it’s not an issue, but others are in the risk category. And from there we’ll probably look at our larger database. We’ve already plucked out the people we knew were higher risk, but we do have phone numbers that we’ll at least check in with.” Glatt added that Adopt a Neighbor Ashland is one of several programs geared toward helping Ashland seniors — the new Senior Phone Buddy program is another — available through the Ashland Senior Services Division, which can be accessed by calling 541-488-5342 or emailing [email protected]. Once a volunteer is paired with a neighbor in need and contact information is exchanged, Adopt a Neighbor works pretty much like any two-way exchange between a person headed out to run errands and the person with the shopping list, with the caveat that they are strangers. At least at first. Bagshaw, 48, who owns a community of homes for senior citizens in Medford called Aspens on the Creek, said the process to sign up was quick and painless. She filled out the application and within days was paired with a woman and soon thereafter a man. Bagshaw texted the woman, who was excited to get started and already had a list for Bi-Mart and Shop’n Kart ready to go. For specialty items, Bagshaw’s “neighbor” texted pictures and in-store locations. “It was like 10 or 15 items,” Bagshaw said. “And I’m going again (Monday), so I’ve been in contact with both of my folks saying, ‘I’m going to Bi-Mart, I’m going to Shop’n Kart, so get your list to me by noon today and I can get you your stuff.’” Gary Kout, a 53-year-old filmmaker, said he found out about the program through Nextdoor, an online hub for connecting with community members. With the film industry shut down by COVID-19, Kout decided to pitch in about 10 days ago and was paired with two people within a couple days — one right around the corner from his house, and another just down the street. Kout emailed and called his first match, a woman, and the two got to know each other and worked out the details. “We had a great conversation,” Kout said. “She told me a little bit about herself, and we talked about what she would need and how we’d handle the transfer of goods and money. And then my first trip for her was the next day.” Kout said the list was very specific, and he promised to call her from the store if there was any confusion. While there, he noticed a sign that advertised a service through which shopping lists can be phoned in and items paid for in advance. He mentioned it to his “neighbor” and now the service he provides, for her at least, is even more streamlined, with the payment and the list itself handled ahead of time. “It feels good,” Kout said of helping. “It’s such a small part in such a big thing. I wish I could do more. I’ve been pretty active online and I’m seeing people all over help in so many ways, whether it’s making masks at home or reading to kids. I’m available to do a lot of that stuff but I saw this. I didn’t know how fast they’d call me up and how it would go, but I’m glad I’m doing something.” Shaw said the program could be duplicated elsewhere, and in time she hopes to do just that. “But with all that said, it’s important to underscore that to initiate such an effort in Ashland is clearly picking low-hanging fruit,” she said. “Indeed if it could work anywhere, Ashland was the perfect community to incubate and test the effort.” Joe Zavala can be reached at 541-821-0829 or [email protected]. Andy Atkinson / Ashland TidingsJennifer Bagshaw shops at Shop’n Kart in Ashland while volunteering in the Adopt a Neighbor program. Andy Atkinson / Ashland TidingsJennifer Bagshaw shops at Shop’n Kart in Ashland while volunteering in the Adopt a Neighbor program.