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Profile_FINAL 12/30/09 2:09 PM Page 12 Natural-Born Advocate Lorna Grundeman, RN always felt a calling to help people in crisis. By Lucia Hwang L orna grundeman is not one of those registered nurses who always grew up wanting to be an RN. But she has always been an advocate. Grundeman, a CNA/NNOC board member since 2007, grew up in Bakersfield, Calif., and her main ambition in the 1970s after high school was to get out and see the world. For a couple of years, she hitchhiked her way around the country. For several seasons, she worked as a "fruit tramp," sorting cantaloupe in the fields. She eventually got married and settled in Alaska, where she found a job at a hospital in Fairbanks as an aide in the pediatrics unit on the evening shift. It was there that she first met and quickly grew to admire registered nurses. "The nurses I worked with were totally cool," said Grundeman. "I wanted to be like them. They did all kinds of public health stuff in the 12 REGISTERED NURSE community. The itinerant nurses would fly out to the villages to take care of native health." And after Grundeman gave birth to her first child, she never forgot the public health nurse who made postpartum visits to her home. "Her name was Elaine Mackenzie and I just remember I was so grateful because I didn't know anything," said Grundeman. Grundeman next worked for a women's shelter for rape and domestic abuse crisis victims, another environment that influenced her greatly. A second child and divorce later, Grundeman decided to make a fresh start in San Antonio, Texas and to finally earn that nursing degree at the University of Texas Health Science Center. Still very much focused on public health, Grundeman did some work for a homeless shelter in San Antonio, eventually even winning a national contest for a paper she authored about teaching mothers in the shelter about the signs of dehydration as part of dealing with one of the worst health problems among children there: diarrhea. W W W. C A L N U R S E S . O R G NOVEMBER | DECEMBER 2009