When Faustino Mendez arrived at SKLD Zeeland, a skilled nursing rehab facility in Zeeland, MI, in December, he had been out of contact with his family for about five years.

Things changed in 2021, when he was able to reunite with his son living in Texas whom he hadn’t seen in about 25 years.

Mendez had told the staff at SKLD that he had family in Texas and Mexico, but he had not revealed specific locations to them.

“We’d been trying to find any contact for him and working with other agencies to see if he had other family around,” Tammy Reiffer, SKLD social worker, explained to Mcknight’s Long Term Care News last week.

Then in June, Mendez revealed that he knew a son’s address in Mexico. With the help of a dietary aide at the facility, he wrote a letter that explained where he was and that he wanted to reconnect with them.

The aide, Maria, accidentally forgot to mail the letter but happened to be going to Mexico on vacation so she brought it with her, and took it upon herself to make a hand delivery.

The address on the letter was unoccupied, but Maria continued her search. She asked multiple neighbors and locals for any information they could offer and was eventually able to speak to someone who knew and helped locate Mendez’s family.

One of Mendez’s sons helped Maria connect with another son, Juan Mendez, who was living in Texas. Juan immediately decided to travel to the facility to meet him and arranged with Reiffer for Mendez to be discharged in late June. 

At first, Mendez did not recognize his son due to surgical masks covering their faces. But once he realized what was going on, Mendez “rushed over in his walker and grabbed him and hugged him” as staff celebrated, Reiffer recalled. 

Mendez is now living with his son and his son’s wife in Texas and doing well, Reiffer said. His daughter-in-law calls the staff from time to time to update them and to stay in touch. 

Reiffer noted that it was only “thanks to the Spanish-speaking staff” that Mendez was able to reconnect with his family. Just another way that enhanced communication and trust were once again some of the best skills that any operator could provide.