People are my purpose.

When I was growing up, care wasn't something we talked about. It was something we lived.

Grampa Bill and Grandma Hiltz had sold their home, bought an RV, and were just days away from traveling across the country. They were staying with my dad and his wife, who had just welcomed my baby brother. Their RV was parked in the driveway when Grampa Bill died suddenly of a heart attack.

In an instant, Grandma Hiltz lost her husband and the future they had imagined together. My parents did something extraordinary: they added a second story to our family home so she could have her own space, right there with us. That's the house you see in the Humble Stewards logo.

She was loved and cared for, but she had also lost the life she was supposed to share with Grampa Bill. I didn't fully understand that then. What I did understand was how much I loved our time together.

I would come home from school and sit with Grandma Hiltz for hours. She told me about growing up on a farm, her school days, raising five children, and a world that felt so different from mine. Her eyes would light up as she remembered! And she listened to me just as intently, treating me like a friend whose thoughts mattered. Neither of us watched the clock. We just let the conversation go wherever it wanted.

I didn't have a word for what we gave each other then. Now I do: presence. The kind that makes someone feel truly seen and heard, not just for who they are today, but for everything they've been.

Years later, my mother's mother, whom we called Turtle Gramma because she had a tortoise, needed us too. She had been living on her own in Shell Beach, but repeated falls meant my mom and aunt were constantly making the hour and a half drive to help her. After a neighbor found her following another fall, the family faced the painful decision that she could no longer safely live alone.

Eventually, Turtle Gramma moved in with my mom, who lovingly gave her the master bedroom so she could have a comfortable space of her own, complete with sliding glass doors opening onto a private patio. The birds outside became one of Gramma’s last true pleasures. She fed them faithfully every morning, insisted she knew them each by name, and worried terribly on the days when she was too tired, too sick, or in too much pain to feed them herself. She fretted as though those little birds depended on her alone, as though no one else would think to care for them. I think they gave her something precious to look forward to each day, a little piece of purpose and joy when so much else had become difficult. Meanwhile, her house in Shell Beach remained untouched, just as the family had promised. I think a part of her always believed that someday, if she could just get strong enough, she would go home again.

As her health declined, we moved her bed beside those glass doors so she could still watch the birds. She passed peacefully, surrounded by family, with a view of the birds she loved just outside that glass.

My parents gave them something beautiful. They welcomed them into our world. But whenever it's possible, the dream is to help your parent stay in theirs. Their routines. Their neighbors. Their kitchen. Their birds. Their independence.

Later, when I raised my own children, stories my grandmothers had told me began to make sense in ways they couldn't have when I was young. Despite the decades between us, we had more in common than I ever imagined. All those afternoons listening had been a gift to both of us.

I didn't arrive at this work by accident. I studied psychology, drawn to understanding what people carry and what they're afraid to ask for. I raised my own children. I spent years as a Dean of Students at a K–8 school, helping families through difficult seasons. I worked in senior socialization with homebound, isolated older adults who often had no family or friends nearby. When COVID took so much connection away from seniors, I moved into one-on-one care, and I haven't looked back.

Before all of this, I spent a decade as a high-tech corporate manager in Silicon Valley. That background shapes how I work: organized, communicative, and always accountable to the families I serve.

To walk someone's final years with them. To ease their way. To hold their hand and make sure they are not alone in it. That is not a job to me. It is a calling.

Humble Stewards is a boutique, owner-led caregiving practice serving seniors and families across San Jose and Silicon Valley. I work with a select number of families at a time because the work I do requires presence, not volume.

Whether your parent lives independently in their own home or has joined your household and needs a trusted presence during the day, what they need is the same. Someone who knows them. Someone who shows up. Someone who genuinely cares what happens when you're not there.