LEXINGTON, S.C. — A group of senior service businesses in the Midlands got together to show seniors some love this Valentine's Day.
All About Seniors, Dynamic Mobile Imaging, McLeod Home Care and Pathway Hospice put their heads together and decided to bring special flowers to senior homes around Lexington.
"We said to ourselves, 'how can we give back?' and to help share some of the love to let these residents that are in senior living communities know that they are not forgotten, that they are loved," Heather Emmer at Dynamic Mobile Imaging told News19.
"We have just seen so much happiness and joy," says Cindy Tyner with All About Seniors Magazine. "One particular story stands out for me. We went into one of the resident's apartments. We had to socially distance, of course, and we had our masks on. And the facility said 'now she cannot get out of her bed, she's bed-bound, but she would love to see y'all's faces,'" Tyner continues. "So, she sprung up out of her bed and she had the biggest smile from ear to ear when she saw us come in with the flowers. So, that just really stands out for me."
Each rose handed out had a card attached saying 'Happy Valentine's Day, You are loved.'
"I think with the pandemic and being pretty much quarantined, just being able to reach out to those residents," Malinda Rutledge-Carlisle from Pathway Hospice says, "realizing that every day is a gift and if we can provide some joy for those residents and our patients, then that's what we're all about."
Melisa McLeod of McLeod Home Care told us, "It's been incredibly rewarding for us to be able to see the residents of these wonderful communities and the staff who have really been through it over this year of COVID[19]."
Students from Columbia International University also volunteered with the Valentine's. Bethany Smith says, "we're just all about serving so the fact that we get to serve these seniors in this living facility is just really great."
CIU Assistant Dean James McCall says, "We love to just serve people and something like this is very practical giving residents in an assisted living facility roses that they'll remember for a long time."
We tagged along to their handout at Westminster Memory Care Senior Living but they made many other stops throughout the week.