How volunteering helps Lucy Taylor help others

Every morning, Fallbrook Hospital Volunteer Chaplain Lucy Taylor can be found carting one of her yummy fresh-baked cakes through a maze of corridors. Her captivating smile peppers the halls and affects everyone who comes into contact with her.

Taylor has been a volunteer at the hospital for the last 25 years and a volunteer chaplain for more than 15 years. How she found her way there begins with a heartrending story: Taylor received a call from the Hospital Auxiliary Pink Ladies informing her that she had been sponsored the day after she buried her beloved 23-year-old son.

Her son, Taylor explained, was working on a project in Palm Desert. A healthy, robust young man, “he collapsed with a cerebral aneurism on the base of his brain,” said Taylor. “We got a call from the hospital letting us know they had him on life support.”

That phone call ripped through the hearts of Taylor, her husband and her other children. Sadly, her son passed away.

Losing her son scathed Taylor’s core, leaving her in tormented grief. “My heart hurt so much, I just didn’t want to live,” she said.

Taylor then prayed to God, telling Him that since she was unable to help her deceased son, perhaps she could help another mother’s son or daughter – or anyone else, for that matter. Though she was in no shape to start volunteering at that particular moment, Taylor said God spoke to her heart and reminded her that this was what she had asked for.

Taylor embraced her hospice training, went to theological bible classes and began volunteering at the Fallbrook Hospital and Skilled Nursing Facility. “I did everything I could possibly do to keep my hands and my mind busy,” shared Taylor. Volunteering and helping others saved Taylor from a dark depression.

Between 3 and 4 o’clock each morning, Taylor rises from bed, preheats her oven, reads some scriptures and drinks her coffee. When the oven is ready, Taylor slides her Bundt cakes onto the racks.

“I love to bake,” she said. “I bake anywhere from 12 to 14 cakes a week.”

During the week, Taylor delivers the cakes to the Skilled Nursing Facility and, depending on the day of the week, different departments at the hospital get their heavenly desserts. “I bake lemon poppy seed, fresh apple and fresh peach. I use whatever fresh fruits are in season.”

Taylor’s Sock-it-to-Me cake is a pleaser, too. The ingredients for this cake include low-fat sour cream, apple sauce, cinnamon, brown sugar and black walnuts.

In addition to baking, Taylor serves as a driver for the hospital, transporting patients back home. “We now have 25 to 30 drivers; we all drive different days and fill in for each other,” added Taylor.

Taylor remains ever humble regarding her volunteering: “God uses me as a vessel. I don’t do anything; it is just by the grace of God.”

As a chaplain, Taylor is determined never to push her religion on anyone. Religions are a dime a dozen, she says. “All I do is serve God. My job is to comfort others and lift some of the grief off of their hearts.” She has learned to always be a stepping stone for people and never a stumbling block.

Taylor firmly believes that “we are our brother’s keepers.” “If everybody would look after just one person, and that person would look after another,” she believes, “it would be such a pleasant, peaceful world to live in.”