JoAnn Freeborn – Mesa Life Options

Several years ago after retiring from her position as a social services provider, JoAnn Freeborn and her husband, who was also newly retired, relocated to the Mesa area for health reasons. After raising a family, attaining a college degree late in life, and successfully following her passion to professional success and recognition as director of an area agency on aging, she found herself forced to retire due to a heart attack and quintuple bypass surgery.

Since she had worked with senior adults through much of her career, JoAnn realized the tremendous sociological implications of maintaining the mental and physical health of the nation’s aging adult population. She also knew that the major threat to that population came not in the form of physical or economic disability, but isolation.

Now JoAnn was facing that isolation firsthand. 

The accompanying depression and challenges faced during her recovery led her to seek answers through relocating to the Southwest, in part due to a need to care for her own elderly parents, as well as proximity to her daughter, who would be providing additional assistance.

However, the relocation carried its own share of challenges, inherent in making such a move after 30 years spent establishing a life in the Midwest. But JoAnn was fortunate to have had the benefit of a career spent in helping others deal with similar issues, and she knew it was time to “walk her talk.”

Once her physical condition improved, her renewed sense of energy prompted her to seek out new challenges – and one of those, ironically enough, found her instrumental in the creation of an initiative designed to aid and assist individuals in their transition from one career or life situation to the next.

She soon developed a connection to Mesa Community College, finding an outlet for her skills and abilities, culminating in her involvement in the development of the Mesa Life Options program. She helped to develop a unique “peer mentoring” component for the program, in which senior adults who have successfully transitioned to a new career or life pursuit can share their experience with others.