Helen Shares Her Story

Helen is what you would have to call a high-energy person. At the age of 52, this Floridian is leading an active lifestyle watching out for others, spreading the Good Word, taking care of her own mind and body, and sometimes sharing her irrepressible brand of humor just to put a smile on the face of those lucky souls she encounters along the way. Oh, and by the way, she’s also learned to speak Vietnamese.

“I don’t really have any specific talents,” she says. “I’m sort of an eclectic, I just absolutely love life.”

Helen lives in the town of Wesley Chapel north of Tampa, taking care of her 74-year-old mother and holding down a full-time job with a large insurance company looking after the firm’s elderly clients in need of medical care. “I deal with a lot of the elderly that are in need of services, and I work with the homecare agencies and the assisted living facilities and the nursing homes,” she explains.

The other part of her life that keeps her busy is her devotion to her faith and lifelong commitment to bearing witness to the teachings of her church. “That’s a primary part of my life,” she says, “so there’s a lot of learning and trying to remember the Bible so I can share it with other people.”

Helen adds that learning the Vietnamese language “led into my work as a missionary within the local Vietnamese communities, often visiting with them while wearing the traditional dress.”

Helen also takes good care of herself by exercising and eating healthy meals, a commitment she takes seriously. “I am a very physically active person,” she says. “When COVID hit, I immediately resigned from the gym and I built a home gym in my garage with the help of my brother who lives right down the street, so we work out three times a week.”

She adds, “The reason why I am very healthy and keep trying to keep in shape as much as I can is my daughter’s a personal trainer, so she she started me down that path, many, many years ago.”

In addition to her brother’s help and her daughter’s training, Helen has a deeper reason for maintaining a healthy lifestyle. “I don’t like anything that makes it harder for me to think,” she explains. “I don’t like not being able to have clarity in my mind, and so that’s why I’ve never been big on, you know, over-eating, or alcohol or smoking or anything like that because I want to face everything with a full clear brain.”

That brain of hers sometimes tells her to cut loose and have some fun. “I am a risk-taker,” she readily admits, “and I like to joke around now and then. Some people have even suggested I should be a comedienne. I like to make my mom laugh, she has a nice sense of humor, and she makes me laugh too. We don’t take things too seriously.”

Helen began to feel that her ability to remember things was slipping. She researched various products and settled finally on Prevagen. The result, she says, was remarkable. “I was able to think more clearly – almost to segment my thoughts better.”

For this hard-working woman with a lot on her mind, that has been a particularly good development in her very full life.