Tag Archive for: Employee Spotlight

With his decades in food service, George Shum has learned that the small details make a big difference.

“We ensure our plates are preheated to keep the food warm,” said Homeland Center’s chef manager. “It’s simple but important.”

George joined Homeland in the spring of 2022, bringing his listening and management skills to the complex job of planning, ordering, inventorying, and scheduling that makes every meal served to residents possible.

At Homeland, kitchen staff takes good care of residents and personalizes their meals – something George hasn’t always seen at other nursing communities.

“If they want turkey and Swiss cheese on rye bread, we’ll make it for them as long as we have the ingredients,” he said. “This is something residents can look forward to.”

George’s journey in food service took him from a restaurant in East Side Manhattan to Richmond, Virginia, to Baltimore, and finally to York, where he worked for a chain restaurant and a nursing home food contractor. He has owned restaurants and managed kitchens. He is so skilled on the grill — keeping more than two dozen orders on track — that a coworker once called him “a beast.”

“I can’t teach you that,” he said. “I just go with it.”

George’s father was a chef, and when George was 10, he announced to the family that he would make a lunch of sweet and sour pork, but it didn’t go as well as he had hoped.

“The pork was uncooked,” he said with a laugh. “The middle was raw.”

He has learned to jump in wherever he’s needed.

“I never shy from doing dishes,” he said. “You have to lead by example. If I don’t want to do the dishes, it sends a message that it’s not a good thing. By the end of the day, I’m always drenched with soap.”

At Homeland, George joins the resident council meetings, taking note of suggestions and ideas for maintaining Homeland’s high standards in dining.

“At the most recent meeting, they said the meat is juicy and tender,” he said. “Everything is going well.”

Meal planning and execution for a retirement community always require the dual skills of listening and adjusting. If a resident misses her sugar-free ice cream, George makes sure to put in an order. When one resident shared that the fried fish tasted overly salty, George noticed that the breading was the culprit. He diluted the breading with a 50/50 split of corn meal, and the result was a big hit.

“I try to make it a point to acknowledge people when I see them,” he said. “I always try to put myself into their place. Treat others how you want to be treated. Give them a little bit of dignity. Give them respect. Joke with them. I think that’s important.”

George and his family immigrated to the U.S. from Hong Kong when he was 12. He knew English, although getting used to the spoken rather than the written word took time. In college, he trained as a civil engineer but, amid an oil crisis, couldn’t find work in that field.

Today, he indulges in his passion for building and tinkering by working on classic cars. Currently, he has a smooth-running, six-cylinder 2002 Subaru – an inexpensive purchase that has sucked up thousands of dollars in parts — and a diesel 1985 Mercedes-Benz 300. He has also restored other Subarus to sell or give to his sons.

George has four grown children – two daughters, two sons, none of whom cook – and one granddaughter. He and his wife, a middle school art teacher in Baltimore, live in Dallastown.

He is happy to be working at Homeland.

“This is the first time I worked for a nonprofit organization, and I see the difference in how they treat the residents,” he said. “It’s really nice.”

One of Latashia Simmons’ daughters is 13 and doing well, but around age 4, she was diagnosed with cancer. That experience inspired Latashia to become a registered nurse.

“Back then, I always said that once her treatments were done, I would go to school, and that’s what I did,” Latashia says. “Now she wants to be a nurse.”

Latashia has been with Homeland for 11 years, initially as a CNA providing direct care for residents. Today she is the Assistant Director of Nursing/Clinical Liaison, working with the team to ensure quality care.

“I absolutely love it here,” she says. “There’s teamwork. I love the residents. When my daughter was sick, it was like my therapy to come into work.”

Her daughter’s time in the health care system planted the seed for Latashia to put her career in high gear.

“I was there for her emotionally and everything, but I felt so hopeless,” she says. “I wanted to be able to help people.”

She went on to earn her LPN, RN, and associate degree. Next year, she will complete her bachelor’s degree from U.S. University.

“I’ve always been a climb-up-the-ladder person,” she says, recalling her early years at a McDonald’s, moving from crew to assistant manager to manager. “That’s kind of what I do. I climb up.”

At Homeland, Latashia is a floater supporting the other Assistant Directors of Nursing, or ADONs, as they’re known. She covers their units when they go on vacation or take a leave of absence.

When COVID shut Homeland’s doors, family members especially appreciated the support that Latashia and her coworkers gave the residents.

“Everyone came together during COVID,” she says. “That brought it out more, and it’s still here.”

Most of her work concentrates on Homeland’s skilled care unit, but she also loves interacting with residents in personal care.

“Everybody knows me over there, too,” she says. “I just like chit-chatting all over the place. A lot of residents have watched me grow. They all watched me go to school. A resident from personal care came to one of my graduations.”

She likes to say that learning all she can is one of her superpowers.

“It helps me with critical thinking, and I try to apply that to my everyday workflow,’’ Latashia says. “In nursing, you learn something new every day.”

Latashia has lived in the Harrisburg area since she was 10 or 11, but in her early years, she traveled with her Air Force dad to Florida, New Mexico, Alaska, and Philadelphia.

When she’s at home, she turns down the stress levels from her busy days by reading or watching movies.

“I like a lot of sci-fi stuff like werewolves and vampires,” she says. “I like romance novels, too. I watch a lot of Hallmark Channel.”

Latashia has four children, all living at home, ranging in age from 11 to 21. The family recently bought a house in the Harrisburg area and welcomed a new puppy, a blue-eyed pit bull.

“He’s so cute,’’ she says. “I’ve always wanted to get a dog for the family. The kids all just love him.’’

Back at work, every degree and promotion Latashia has earned makes her job busier, but that’s okay.

“No matter how busy I am, I still make time for the residents,” Latashia says. “It’s important for me to feel like I made a difference.”

Liz Toci felt at home when she came to Homeland Center for a job interview.

“When I walked in the door, I thought it was a beautiful place,” says Homeland’s new infection preventionist. She brings to Homeland a lifetime of caring for others, a deep interest in nursing for the elderly, and a passion for keeping people and places healthy.

Liz had always enjoyed caring for people, even when she was young and helping raise her younger brothers. She had some shadowing opportunities in nursing and realized that nurses “see people when they’re very vulnerable and need an advocate.”

The Middletown native earned her bachelor’s degree in nursing at West Chester University. For a time, she worked in nursing with psychiatric patients. Her dementia patients gave her an affinity for the elderly, and she went to work for a Harrisburg-area nursing home.

Liz says that advocacy skills are especially important for nurses who support dementia patients.

“It becomes about your intuition and trying to sense what people want and what they need,” she says. “It’s a lot of trying to interpret their desires and what’s going to make them most comfortable.”

Liz’s previous job as assistant director of nursing and conducting infection-prevention duties—all during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic—also raised her awareness of the steps nursing staff can take to educate themselves and protect their patients.

“Because we worked with a very vulnerable population, I wanted to learn as much as possible about how to prevent it from coming in, so the residents are at the least risk possible,” says Liz, who joined Homeland in 2022.

As an infection preventionist, she monitors antibiotic use among the residents, tracking to ensure they’re getting better. She also helps interpret and implement Department of Health COVID guidelines. She says that Homeland staff members are receptive to education about safety protocols because “when you work in long-term care, you see how hard even a minor infection can impact someone.”

She says that Homeland’s well-organized and collaborative operations benefit the residents and uphold excellence.

“It creates better outcomes because I have collaboration in my infection control efforts,” Liz says. “I can also lend a hand in the role of RN and help out with whatever needs the clinical staff might have. It’s a great team atmosphere, providing better support for residents.”

She can also approach colleagues and Homeland administrators for answers to her questions.

“It’s great to feel like you can ask questions to continue learning,” she says. “It’s nice to feel like you’re learning something new every day because the knowledge base in this field is so broad.”

Maybe someday, she’ll get a nurse practitioner degree, but she will always work in gerontology. For Liz, it’s about helping the elderly who have “worked so hard their whole lives. As a society, we need to reward them for all their hard work—give them some time to rest and enjoy their retirement and life.”

Liz and her husband live in Middletown, and in her free time, she scours flea markets for jewelry that she takes apart and restrings into fun, colorful necklaces and bracelets.

“That’s my creative outlet,” she says. “I go to flea markets and put necklaces in plastic bags. For $10, I can entertain myself for months.”

She also enjoys reading, including such classics as “Anna Karenina” and “Madame Bovary.” She discovered her love of the classics in high school and expanded her reading list when college friends with diverse majors introduced her to their favorites.

It’s all about soaking up learning, including lessons from visiting with Homeland’s residents. She also loves the range of Homeland activities.

“Residents need more than just their basic needs met,” she says. “They need their social needs to be met. They need stimulation. I think it’s just wonderful when I’m walking around and see all the activities going on to help improve the residents’ quality of life.”