From Customer To Owner One Woman’s Experience With Elder Care Led Her To Help Others In 2001, Toni Scharr began a life-altering journey. Her story is not unique. Her mother, Mary Pawlek, suffered a stroke and spent time in a nursing home. Toni and her siblings wrestled with the same issues many Americans do when dealing with their elderly parents – “What does mom want? What is best for her? How can we help most when we do not live with her?” “She did not want to be ‘handicapped’ in her own home, as she put it,” Scharr says. “But she was receiving horrible care and not recovering well in the nursing home. We – my dad and the kids – decided to bring her home.” Mary came home to the family’s sprawling farm just across the Rio Grande River from Mexico near McAllen, Texas. Louis Pawlek still farmed large amounts of milo, corn and vegetables. He needed help taking care of his wife. “We were familiar with senior care,” Scharr said. “We found Caring Senior Service and we immediately loved the office staff. I went to the office to meet them, which is rare. The caregivers they brought to meet my mom were outstanding.” It’s been nearly 10 years, and Mary Pawlek is still a Caring Senior Service client. The story is typical, except for one major component: Toni decided to bring the same care her mother received to the elderly where she lived – in Victoria, Texas.
“I never saw myself as a business owner,” she says. “I am a pharmacist, and I have worked in hospital pharmacies for a while. My husband is a business owner, and I did not want to enter that world. “But the more we worked with Caring, the more I thought, ‘what a neat service. Why do we not have this in Victoria?” Toni met with her CPA, and gathered all the information about a franchise from Caring Senior Service founder and CEO Jeff Salter. “We went to San Antonio to meet Jeff, and we began to work on providing this service to our town,” she says. “We thought we researched the area (Victoria) well, then low and behold we found a national competitor here. I worked in three hospitals in town and never saw their information.” Wanting to give the seniors of Victoria the same level of service her mother received in The Valley, Toni took the plunge into business ownership. She came to training in San Antonio and launched her business in 2003. “I searched for an administrator, and had a few people turn me down or be too non-committal,” she says. “Then I found Laurie Koehl, and we haven’t looked back. She came to me with experience caring for a terminally-ill husband and a load of experience working with the elderly. She had such a good reputation.”
The Victoria office outpaced expectations early as clients and their families saw the value of Toni’s business. That trend has continued as the office is today one of the top performers in the Caring family – even in a town that is much smaller than other metropolitan areas where the company has locations.
sionals how Caring Senior Service of Victoria is caring for the seniors of the area. “I hear a lot from people in healthcare,” she says. “They are really appreciative of our active involvement. We go to doctors’ appointments with clients, we call in home health or hospice when we feel it appropriate.” Toni even points back to her mother’s care in McAllen. “The caregivers noticed some things in my mom,” she says. “They called home health, called the doctor and they found she had lymphoma. We were able to get her treated and she is doing fine. I think we do the same things here in Victoria – really help people.”
“Even in my personal situation, we could have gone with private caregivers,” Toni says. “But my dad could not run a large farm, and manage multiple caregivers. He managed farm workers all his life. Caring managed the schedules, introduced the caregivers any time there was a change. They took care of it all, so my dad could keep working and my mom could thrive.” That level of attention is what Toni expects from her Caring office. “I am a hands-off owner,” she says. “I still work in pharmacy consulting, and I helped us get going in that first year, then turned it over to Laurie and her staff. I am available, of course, and I come in often, but the Caring system allows for dedicated people to really provide high levels of customer service to a lot of clients.”
Toni’s father, Louis, passed away recently, but her brother now runs the farm. Her mother can still look across the river into Mexico as she has done for years, because of the dedication of a team of people who came together to make her life better when an institution could not. “People want to be home,” Toni says. “It’s not always possible, but there are a lot of resources out there for people to explore. I have a personal interest and story in how staying home has helped my mother tremendously. I wanted to give that opportunity to others.” Caring Senior Service offers services, education and safety care products that allow seniors and their families to make aging in place their first option. Since 1991, Caring has been dedicated in making positive changes in the lives of others by providing trusted service and support as loved ones age.
The dedication to providing quality caregivers, care solutions and active involvement gives Toni and her staff satisfaction. It’s what the company calls GreatCare™. “We had a client we signed up at the very beginning,” Toni says. “She needed help, but did not want it. She was a hoarder, and she had 100 cats. She really had difficulty living alone. We came in and cleaned the house, made friends with her and she allowed us to care for her until she died in 2009. Without us, I think she would have passed a lot sooner. We gave her the control to improve and enjoy her life – she loved those cats – for several years.” Toni hears it in the community. He work in pharmacy consultant positions allows her to hear from healthcare profes-
Since 2001, Toni Schaar’s mother, Mary Pawlik has enjoyed care from Caring Senior Service of McAllen, TX. Toni Schaar now owns her own Caring Senior Service franchise in Victoria, TX.