Retired nurse finds purpose in helping others

Cathy Brossier’s friends describe her as an angel to those in need.

Whether it be elderly friends, neighbors or strangers, the retired Army nurse always finds a way to fulfill a need.

Brossier, 73, who is active in her parish as a Eucharistic minister at the St. Anthony Catholic church in Kailua, takes communion to patients at Castle Medical Center on Monday mornings.

She also heads a social services program called Project Dana, which provides assistance to the elderly and house-bound. She takes seniors shopping, runs errands for them, goes to doctor’s appointments and offers other assistance that normally would be provided by family members.

On Thursdays, she volunteers with Meals on Wheels, picking up trays of food at Castle hospital then delivering them to Kaneohe residents, many of whom know her by name. In between caring for her three grandchildren, who live with her, she also finds the time to take care of elderly neighbors who can’t take care of themselves.

“She gets a lot of enjoyment out of helping all of these people who really need help,” said longtime friend Moana Guerrero. “She recognizes their needs and she just volunteers. It’s not like they even ask. She just sees their needs and is willing to step in and help them. She’s very unselfish with her time. She’s just an awesome human being. She’s like a Florence Nightingale.”

Brossier recently helped a neighboring couple in their early 90s move into an assisted living facility. Before that, she would go to Costco and do all their grocery shopping and make sure they were taking the right doses of medications.

“They’re just neighbors. But she does that on her own,” Guerrero said. “Because she’s a nurse, she more so realizes how bad off people are.”

Another close friend, Patty Lee, who’s known Brossier since the 1970s when they both lived in Kaneohe’s Haiku Village, always depended on her for medical advice when her children were young.

“On my way to the (emergency room) I would always ask her if I really needed to go. She was my first line of defense in preserving my children’s lives,” Lee said. “This is just a part of her.”

Lee said Brossier ended up taking care of another elderly neighbor who didn’t have family caregivers.

“She got her the caregivers she needed, watched over the caregivers and made sure her dog was taken care of,” Lee said. “She made sure everything that needed to be done was done. She’s still attending to elderly people and she does it well.”

Brossier’s faith in God, compassion and strong will is what drives her to give so much of her time to others, Lee added.

“She feels this is her role in life and she’s following through with it,” she said. “She’s a very devout person. She does these things that need to be done that nobody really gives anybody credit for. These are the things that grease the wheels of civilizations and make things work smoothly.”