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MEET THE MANAGER: Lori Erickson
MEET THE MANAGER: Lori Erickson
Naval Medical center San Diego Fisher House
Fisher House Foundation is privileged to have amazing managers at our Fisher Houses. These professionals do a wonderful job taking care of the families that call Fisher House “a home away from home.”
Story by David Nye
The first Fisher House was still under construction when Lorene “Lori” Erickson got the call that every military spouse dreads: her husband, a Marine tanker, had been seriously wounded by friendly fire in Desert Storm and needed emergency surgery. Lori and her two kids nervously waited for word of his fate for three weeks until dad showed up on the doorstep wrapped in bandages and carrying his duffel bag.
So, when the former medical assistant and massage therapist got the chance to take over the Camp Lejeune Fisher House in 2010, she leaped at the opening and got the job. A year and a half later, she transferred to the Naval Medical Center San Diego Fisher House.
In a career that’s spanned 10 years and both coasts, she’s helped thousands of military families. Now, she’s headed off to a wellearned retirement. But when she talks about the families and veterans, it’s easy to see why she stayed as long as she did.
One patient at NMCSD survived an improvised explosive device attack and eventually lost both legs after an over three-year fight. His parents had also each lost a limb to diabetes. He came to San Diego because he wanted to snowboard again and made an impact on the other families during his stay at the Fisher House.
“He was having a special prosthetic made for him,” Lori said. “And so he stayed with us and he was super fun. The families in the house actually would come to me and say, ‘I can't believe his story.’”
The two San Diego Fisher Houses host a lot of families welcoming premature babies or fighting cancer. Lori and her staff work hard to help them all. But she has a clear affinity for families like hers once was, back when she was a military spouse with a wounded Marine on the other side of the world, two kids, lots of questions, and no answers.
“I just knew that, okay, there's not going to be another family that's going to have to go through what I went through,” she said. “Not if I have any power to keep that from happening.”
The families she’s served have appreciated that dedication. When she moved from Camp Lejeune to San Diego, she enjoyed Thanksgiving with a family that had stayed at the Camp Lejeune Fisher House.
“I tried to find their house, and I don't go anywhere without my GPS,” she said, “but my GPS had me going, I was three miles from the Tijuana border and I'm like, ‘Well, I know they don't live in Mexico, so I've got to have a wrong name of a street or something.’ I finally found it and we had a great time. It was definitely cool to get back with them.”
Now, Lori and her husband are planning to travel the country in a fifth-wheel RV for a few years before settling down again.
They hope to find a spot near a hospital, both because her husband uses VA medical care and because they both want to be able to volunteer regularly.
