Street Outreach Services Celebrates the Return of a Dedicated Nurse

News provided by

San Francisco Community Clinic Consortium

Mar 08, 2024, 12:00 ET

Retired nurse, Jesse Merril, gets her wish granted by Wish of a Lifetime from AARP: to return to SFCCC's Street Outreach Services for a day of service.

SAN FRANCISCO, March 8, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- In 1998, Jesse Merril was studying nursing when she was assigned a student rotation to provide street medicine to the unhoused with San Francisco Community Clinic's Consortium's Street Outreach Services (SOS) mobile medical program. "There are some things in life that totally change the course of it and that did," she reflects. Jesse is a wish recipient of Wish of a Lifetime, a charitable affiliate of AARP that grants life-changing wishes to older adults and inspires people to redefine aging in America. Her wish? To spend a day back on the job that helped shape her.

From left to right: SFCCC Director of Community Services, Beth Rittenhouse-Dhesi, SFCCC SOS Outreach Worker, Francisco Barrera, Jesse Merrill, Jim Schwartz, SFCCC SOS Program Manager, Lara Cruz

Twenty-seven years earlier, while doing outreach with SOS, Jesse had become close to a family living in a converted bus in Bayview, eventually fostering their oldest son. The experience would later inspire her to adopt her daughter from California's foster system, saying "it was very life changing seeing what was going on and being involved with the family…in a lot of ways, it completely altered my life." Though in the intervening years, she'd retired from nursing and moved away from San Francisco, Jesse had long felt a pull to return to SOS.

Wish of a Lifetime arranged for Jesse and her longtime friend and fellow nurse, Jim Schwartz, to fly to San Francisco and spend a day doing outreach with SOS staff. They handed out health and hygiene supplies like socks, water bottles, and wound care materials, knocked on the doors of RVs and tent encampments, and helped to make referrals to needed social services. Jesse was pleased to see that the unique bond SOS staff share with their clients was unchanged, "They were very receptive to seeing us coming," Jim observed. "The staff is very intuitive to their clients' needs." 

Jesse and Jim made such an impression on SOS staff that they were invited back for a previously unplanned second shift the next day, an offer they enthusiastically accepted. Joining SOS at their weekly pop-up clinic at a local soup kitchen, Jesse serendipitously ran into a colleague she'd worked with on the van in '98. "It's been such an incredible trip to come back and see it 27 years later…it was so awesome to see all that they are able to accomplish now."

To read more about Jesse's experience, visit SFCCC's blog.

About SFCCC: San Francisco Community Clinic Consortium (SFCCC) is a partnership of 12 community health centers that serve as the largest primary care safety net delivery system in San Francisco. For over 40 years, SFCCC and its members have been leaders in improving the health status and reducing the health disparities of San Francisco's diverse low-income communities through direct service, population expertise and community leadership.

Media Contact: Mira Levy, [email protected] 

SOURCE San Francisco Community Clinic Consortium