By Michael Alison Chandler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 22, 2006; B01
Rhonda Greer has had many jobs during her 25-year career in the business world. She worked in the marketing department for a Fortune 500 company, managed the office of a consulting firm and trained developers to use software to plan multimillion-dollar projects. Most recently, she has become a chauffeur.
She drives senior citizens around. For a few hours each day, the 53-year-old Potomac Falls resident gets in her white Lexus sedan and pulls up to apartment buildings or assisted living facilities in Annandale or Washington. She escorts her clients from their rooms, sometimes folding their wheelchairs and placing them in the trunk, and she makes sure the seniors are comfortably buckled in. Then she takes them to their hair dresser, to church activities, the podiatrist -- anywhere they want to go.
Greer planned to retire after she married a marketing executive a few years ago. But she ended up taking a part-time job with Buckley's for Seniors, a McLean-based company that offers transportation and nonmedical assistance to seniors.
As more Americans grow older, the number of businesses catering to their daily needs, such as getting dressed or staying organized, is multiplying. Local agencies on aging and publications such as the Guide to Retirement Living are continually updating their listings to keep seniors connected to services in a rapidly growing industry.
Buckley's for Seniors was founded last year by a 32-year-old lawyer named Buckley Kuhn.
"We try to stand in for their son or daughter who, for whatever reason, can't be there," Kuhn said. Rather than provide traditional services, such as bathing, dressing or housekeeping, Buckley's employees help with the extra things: They balance checkbooks, pick up dry cleaning or library books, fix jammed DVD players or call a plumber to make sure the sink gets unclogged. They can also give someone a ride to her colonoscopy. The clients pay $45 an hour.
Kuhn came up with the idea to start the company while working with her mother, Janet L. Kuhn, an elder law lawyer.
After a client once offered to pay Buckley Kuhn to run to the store for some ice cream, she started thinking. When another client wanted to hire someone to accompany her to the Smithsonian for the afternoon, Kuhn said she realized there were people who had money and wanted certain services but couldn't find them.
At the same time, Kuhn was looking for a flexible job that would keep her close to home and her two children. To help get the business off the ground in April 2005, she recruited some high school friends who were in similar situations -- on leave from their careers or caring for young children and pursuing advanced degrees. Together, they put their skills to use running errands and checking off items on another generation's to-do list.
The staffers have flexible schedules and earn $17 to $20 an hour.
"These are professional women who don't happen to be in the professional workforce," said Tamara Clarke, 32, the company's vice president, who is pursuing a degree in international politics at George Mason University and has three children at home.
"We come in and think: What can we do to make your life easier? Then we apply those professional skills to the home," she said.
Kuhn said a big part of what the company offers is companionship for the many elders who are often separated from their families. She said her employees frequently find they have a lot in common with their clients. They may have gone to the same schools, heard the same news report on CNN that morning or traveled in the same parts of the world.
Those connections are comforting to the distant sons and daughters who seek their services, she said.
Last fall, Kuhn got a call from a woman who was working for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Kosovo. She was worried about her dad in Arlington.
While on a three-day trip back to the United States, the daughter arranged for Kuhn to meet her father, Philip Ferrara. Now Kuhn goes to see the 90-year-old retired dentist once a week to help keep him organized.
She pays his bills so they don't pile up and makes his phone calls because he has a hard time hearing. A few weeks ago, she ordered him a new breathing machine for his asthma, and last winter she researched Medicare prescription drug plans and enrolled him in one. After Ferrara's wife was transferred to an Alzheimer's ward and he moved into an apartment by himself, Kuhn helped decorate the living room with prints from Japan and Nairobi that remind him of trips he took with his wife.
Many seniors live on fixed incomes and cannot afford extra services. But Kuhn said that a few hours of assistance each week could make a difference in whether someone can live at home.
Buckley's has become the preferred transportation provider at the assisted living facility in Falcons Landing, a retirement community for former military officers in Loudoun County.
Christine Kreitler, assisted living coordinator at Falcons Landing, said that "it's a little over the top to have a law degree" and do a job that "anybody with a driver's license and no criminal background" could do, but the education and experience of Buckley's employees help them figure out ways to solve problems for the clients.
Buckley's drivers accompany their clients during appointments and take notes so they can report back to the assisted living facility or the clients' children.
Rhonda Greer goes to Falcons Landing about once a week to pick up Lazarus H. Todd, 97, and take him to his doctor appointments.
Recently, Greer went to pick up the retired Army lieutenant colonel for a routine checkup after cataract surgery. The doctor was concerned about a possible infection, and he sent them to another doctor in Sterling, who referred them to a third doctor in Fairfax.
It was a long and complicated day, and Todd said he was grateful to have Greer along to help him navigate and get the treatment he needed.
"I could have just a chauffeur," Todd said. But with Greer, "it was almost as if it were a family member."
