“They’re just like you and I. They want to go to parties,” said Chelsea Martinez, office manager for Assisting Services in Alpena.

The agency on Thursday threw a joint birthday party at Alpena’s Parker House Resort and Restaurant to honor the people with developmental disabilities, mental illness, dementia, and other incapacitating circumstances under the agency’s care.

During June’s Elder and Vulnerable Adult Abuse Awareness Month, Michiganders take note of the more than 73,000 older adults in Michigan subjected to abuse, neglect, or exploitation, according to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

Others, not yet elderly, fall prey to scams, theft, neglect, and other abuses — often at the hands of people they love and trust.

News Photo by Julie Riddle Mina Mason, left, gets her toes wet as Amanda Schuelke, administrative support worker at Assisting Services in Alpena, looks on.

Assisting Services, like several other agencies in Alpena, protects people who are assigned to them by a court and who are unable to make financial, legal, or medical decisions for themselves.

Advocating for the rights and safety of the people they serve, conservators and guardians like those at Assisting Services stand between vulnerable people and those who want to prey on them.

The job is tiring, and few people want to do it, Martinez said, saying the agency, like many others, has struggled to find enough staff to care for the people they come to love as family.

The care they do provide makes all the difference to those protected by their efforts, said Crystal London, one of the guests of honor at Thursday’s birthday party.

Accepting help is hard, she said. But the staff who come to her home several times a week help her have as much as possible of what she treasures the most — independence.

News Photo by Julie Riddle James Walsh, right, celebrates after getting a beanbag through a hole in a cornhole game during a birthday party hosted by Assisting Services in Alpena and held at the Parker House Resort and Restaurant on Thursday.

“It makes me think I can do things by myself,” London said.

Joyfully shouting as he aced a hole-in-one during a friendly cornhole game, birthday party attendee James Walsh said the financial help provided by Assisting Services helps him mature and focus on the future.

The cheerful Michigan Special Olympics participant, who loves to talk and holds down a nearly-full-time job, knows he’ll need that protective help for some time to come, he said.

Anyone can unexpectedly encounter a mental illness, develop dementia, or receive a head injury that makes them unable to make decisions in their own best interest, said Kathleen Robson, owner of Assisting Services.

The agency has served accountants, technology experts, and people with advanced degrees who, because they lost their ability to make wise decisions, lost thousands or even millions of dollars to “Jeff in Dubai” and other scammers, Robson said.

News Photo by Julie Riddle Mina Mason, left, and Amanda Schuelke, administrative support worker at Assisting Services in Alpena, examine a fossil pulled from Long Lake at the Parker House Resort and Restaurant on Thursday.

Anyone can be taken in by a con game, but people with developmental disabilities or other conditions that impair their decision-making abilities are even more at risk because of their vulnerability, she said.

People with such challenges may, because they can’t advocate for themselves, wind up living in squalor or homeless. They may endure serious medical conditions without treatment because they don’t know how to get help, Robson said.

Conservators — who assume control of a vulnerable person’s financial life — and guardians, who take over other decisions, develop close bonds with the people they serve, sometimes becoming both friend and family to people who have neither, or whose loved ones have tried to exploit their vulnerability, Robson said.

She gets calls from people served by the agency at all times of day or night. On a morning when she kept track, she fielded 80 phone calls and four court hearings before noon.

One regular, she said, has called at least once a day, and often more, daily for the past four years.

Between calls to doctors and dentists, banks and credit unions, mental health agencies and case workers, conservators and guardians go non-stop all day, every day to take care of their charges. Still, building relationships with them — and treating them like anyone would want to be treated — has to be a top priority, said Amanda Schuelke, administrative support worker for Assisting Services.

At the birthday party on Thursday, Schuelke and party guest Mina Mason cooled their toes in Long Lake, finding fossils in the clear water and talking peacefully about kids and families and life.

It takes a village to protect their most vulnerable, and conservators and guardians fight ferociously to make sure the village steps up and does its part, Schuelke said.

But, when they’re not chasing away scammers and flying through phone calls, they may take a moment to have a burger or throw a beanbag with the people they protect.

Mason’s Assisting Services staff help her where she needs it, but they’re also her friends, and “someone you can talk to,” Mason said. “So you don’t have to be so lonely.”

Julie Riddle can be reached at 989-358-5693 or jriddle@thealpenanews.com. Follow her on Twitter @jriddleX.

To report suspected abuse

If you suspect abuse, neglect, or exploitation of a vulnerable adult, call the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Adult Protective Services hotline 855-444-3911 any time day or night to make a report. Staff will investigate allegations within 24 hours after the report is received.