A6 The SpokeSman • TueSday, SepTember 6, 2022
Nonprofit helps plan end-of-life care
for region’s homeless population
BY ZACK DEMARS
CO Media Group
Shannon Johnson focuses
on getting through each day
with a place to sleep, not what
might happen to her during a
life-threatening medical situ-
ation.
Homeless for the past two
years, Johnson, 47, finds a new
place every three days to park
the van she’s lived in for the last
eight months.
She’s had a kidney condition
for the past year and has surger-
ies on the horizon that put her
at higher risk of a medical emer-
gency, but until recently hadn’t
made plans for possible emer-
gency medical decisions.
Nevertheless, those are im-
portant decisions that can be
challenging for providers to
make in the absence of a relative
or other advocate. What’s more,
those experiencing homeless-
ness have shorter life spans than
housed people, therefore many
face emergencies before the age
people talk about their medical
preferences. Without knowing
what a person wants, hospitals
default to providing care the
person might not want to re-
ceive.
Johnson’s priorities changed
earlier this month when she
ran into staff from the Peace-
ful Presence Project at Bend’s
Lighthouse Navigation Cen-
ter. After a short conversation,
Johnson walked away with an
advance directive, a document
that assigns someone to make
medical decisions on her be-
half if she’s incapacitated and
describes how she would want
to be cared for if she became
permanently unconscious or re-
quired life support, for example.
The form will be connected to
her online medical records.
“It’s a good thing to do, I
think,” Johnson said. “You never
know what will happen.”
Since May, volunteers from
the Peaceful Presence Proj-
Flying car
Continued from A1
The engineering trick here
is those wings, which can fold
out from the passenger com-
partment with the click of the
button. The wings operate on a
hinge, sort of like a switchblade
knife, hence the name.
And although the Switch-
blade is driven like a car, the
three-wheeled vehicle is techni-
cally a motorcycle, allowing the
company to bypass some of the
safety features required of cars,
such as airbags.
CENTRAL OREGON CONNECTION
Bousfield began experiment-
ing in aviation design more than
20 years ago and spent years
working with Boeing engineers
before heading out on his own.
He founded Samson Sky and
put down roots in rural North-
ern California. But the engi-
neering team quickly learned
that carbon fiber would be the
only way the invention could
both fly and pencil out econom-
ically. Bousfield decided the
company needed to be relocated
near a hub of high-quality car-
bon manufacturing.
“There’s really only four or
five places across the coun-
try that specialize in that and
Redmond is one of those,” said
Bousfield.
Composite Approach in Red-
mond has been their main sup-
plier, though Samson Sky has
relied on numerous other local
aerospace manufacturers. They
also utilize the variety of small
airports in the area.
Most of the building and
testing has been done at the
ryan brennecke/The bulletin
Elizabeth Johnson, left, executive director of the Peaceful Presence Project, helps Sarah Maley establish an advance directive during a homeless
outreach event in Redmond on Aug. 26.
ect have been attending local
homeless outreach events, writ-
ing advance directives with oth-
ers like Johnson.
Johnson, who grew up in
Bend and moved back to the
area around 2014, had an ad-
vance directive written through
her health insurance years ago.
But her life was different then
than it is now: She was em-
ployed at a software company,
and lived with her two kids.
Now, she’s stopped looking for
a home to rent, because she
thinks it would be impossible
for her to qualify for one.
Elizabeth Johnson (no rela-
tion to Shannon) runs the Peace
Presence Project and said about
From left, Elizabeth
Johnson, executive
director of the Peace-
ful Presence Project,
helps Kayla Wright
establish an advance
directive during a
homeless outreach
event in Redmond on
Aug. 26.
ryan brennecke/The bulletin
40 people experiencing home-
lessness have written advance
directives with the nonprofit’s
help. The nonprofit provides
end-of-life planning and coun-
seling services for anyone, but
has focused specifically on the
unhoused population this year
with the help of a grant.
“This is a demographic here
locally that’s oftentimes really
left out of the picture,” Elizabeth
Johnson said.
The social status of those ex-
periencing homelessness can
also make those kinds of health
care decisions more fraught:
Family members might be
hard for health care providers
to reach, or might be long es-
tranged from the person whose
care is in question.
“I think the biggest implica-
tion is you have people mak-
ing decisions for you that don’t
know what your current defini-
tion of ‘quality of life’ is, or the
onus is on providers who don’t
have that relational kind of con-
text to move forward with that
kind of care,” Johnson said. “For
a lot of this demographic, there’s
estrangement. There are very
specific reasons why they may
not be in contact with a per-
son who would be able to make
these decisions if they were un-
able to do it for themselves.”
Beyond the practical consid-
erations of finding someone to
make decisions on an incapac-
itated person’s behalf, Johnson
said the focus on the homeless
population specifically is im-
portant because that demo-
graphic tends to have shorter
life expectancies — decades
shorter, according to some anal-
yses — and higher rates of fa-
tal health conditions than the
population as a whole. This
year, 207 people in Oregon have
died unhoused, and most were
between the ages of 45 and 64,
according to preliminary state
data.
The nonprofit provides an
important level of dignity for
those experiencing homeless-
ness and dying unhoused, said
Donna Burklo, Family Kitchen
program director.
“That’s just a part of what we
would all love to know is hap-
pening, that people are being
treated like the individual peo-
ple that they are,” Burklo said.
Johnson said it’s been easier
than she originally expected it
would be to get people inter-
ested in sitting down to have
a difficult conversation about
hypothetical near-death situa-
tions. It’s helped that she’s be-
come a trusted face at shelters
and outreach events — and
that many people experiencing
homelessness have first-hand
experiences with medical emer-
gencies.
“I think for the most part
people really get it because they
have had so many experiences
in the health system where
they’re receiving care, but it’s not
necessarily defined by what they
think is best for themselves,”
Johnson said. “What we lead
with is, this is an empowered
way for you to have more of a
say over your health care.”
█
Reporter: 541-617-7814,
zdemars@bendbulletin.com
Want to see the Switchblade?
For a video of the Switchblade preparing for takeoff at
the Madras Airport, visit redmondspokesman.com.
Prineville Airport, where Sam-
son Sky operates out of three
buildings. The runway there,
however, is a touch too short
for a first flight. They trucked
the vehicle over to the airport
in Madras for acceleration test-
ing, where Bousfield said the
machine clocked in at well over
100 mph — more than 10 mph
faster than needed to take flight.
There may be massive eco-
nomic opportunities for the
region, should the Switchblade
continue to move forward. If it
does, the company will make
prototypes and then likely ex-
pand to smaller, regional manu-
facturing places where custom-
ers can work with employees to
build their own Switchblade.
The “kit aircraft” model is
common for many types of
new planes, though Bousfield
said he is energized by FAA-ap-
proval that allows the company
and customer to build with a
semi-automated process. That
process trims build time down
from a few months to just a
week.
The first major factory
would be a 130,000-square-foot
“multi-million dollar invest-
ment” with at least 200 employ-
ees and likely closer to 300. He
said they would start out buying
parts from suppliers, but would
likely bring that in-house to
keep prices down and ramp up
production schedules.
MAKING IT
Bousfield said that while “fly-
ing cars” are a staple of science
fiction, there have been many
naysayers who think combin-
ing the two modes of travel just
won’t work.
“One of the biggest hurdles
we run across is the misconcep-
tion that a flying car has to be a
car that is mediocre, or a plane
that is mediocre, or a combina-
tion of both,” he said. “From the
get-go, we decided that it has
to be high performance in both
modes, or it won’t (work).”
Take, for instance, the air
conditioning. It’s easy for an
aircraft to stay cool, but not so
much for a car driving around
in Central Oregon in the sum-
mer. So they are using an auto-
motive-style AC unit that can
keep the vehicle cool while on
the ground.
“We’re packing it around
when we fly,” he said. “We don’t
need it.”
But that’s been their style from
the beginning, to design for
the worst-case condition so the
Switchblade is comfortable both
on the ground and in the air.
The quality of that comfort
— and perhaps the viability of
the Switchblade — remains to
be seen. They’ve tested the ma-
chine over and over again in
computer models, in wind tun-
nels and in the real world. It will
fly. But there’s still a lot to learn
when it does.
photo courtesy Samson Sky
Samson Sky employees making final adjustments to the steering of a vehicle that will be both street-legal
and air-legal, the Switchblade Flying Car.
“You can’t tell in a wind tun-
nel how fast you can go, you
can’t tell how high you can go,”
said Bousfield. “You can’t tell
the quality of the flight ... how
it feels to the pilot. To do that,
you’ve got to go up.”
— Previous CO Media Group
reporting contributed to this
story.
█
Reporter:
ttrainor@redmondspokesman.com