EUGENE - Debee Brown was flat-out devastated the day she walked into the veterinarian's office, the only place she'd worked for 43 years, and was told she was no longer needed.
Brown started cleaning kennels in high school and had worked her way up to veterinary assistant, bookkeeper and manager. When the owner's two sons took over the business, Brown soon found herself let go, at age 61, her duties turned over to someone else.
"There was a period of grieving and, 'Oh my god, what am I going to do? This is all I know how to do,' " Brown said.
Divorced and jobless, Brown swallowed her pride, filed for unemployment and set about picking up the pieces of her life. She had attended an AARP event before her layoff - on the topic of working after 50 - and she put into practice the advice she heard that night.
Stay active. Volunteer. Network.
Through a group called Oasis, Brown attended educational programs and lectures, helped a second-grade student in a reading program and volunteered in the office of a local blood center. Soon enough, opportunity knocked.
Brown caught on at another animal hospital, grateful to be employed and around pets again, though it meant a steep pay cut and no benefits. She continued showing up at the blood center, an upbeat place that hired people of all ages, and applied for a full-time staff job. She didn't get it.
"But I kept volunteering," she said. "They came to me and said we have a part-time job and I was hired in March of 2014."
She gave notice at the animal hospital, jumped into new duties at the Lane Blood Center and eventually worked her way into a full-time job there that pays $12.60 an hour and comes with medical, dental, vision, life and disability insurance benefits.
"I'm in seventh heaven," said Brown, now 65. Had she not been laid off, she probably never would have left the job she'd held since high school, she said.
And now?
"I couldn't be happier," said Brown, who works in registration and recruitment. "I make less, but money isn't everything. I plan to work at least another five years. I know I'm going to be OK.
"If I didn't have my IRA to draw from and a house with a really low house payment, I would be worried. I'm just fortunate I have those things to back me up."
-- George Rede
grede@oregonian.com
503-294-4004
@georgerede