71-year-old finds new home -- on the road

At age 67, Doris Stoehr left her comfortable four-bedroom suburban home in Pennsylvania to live in a one-room apartment in Haiti that had no running water or electricity.

It was a late-in-life career move of a sort. Stoehr was burned out working as a nurse in a hospital. She was divorced, and her four children were grown and on their own. So she joined the Peace Corps.

At 71, the grandmother of 13 is preparing for her fourth assignment with the Peace Corps -- a trip to Jamaica, where she will educate urban residents on HIV prevention.

Stoehr is not the only senior traveling overseas to volunteer her time. Of the 7,000 Peace Corps volunteers working in 77 countries, 440 are over 50. The oldest volunteer is 79.

The largest number of senior applicants come from Las Vegas, said Peace Corp recruiter Kirsten Firing, who recruits in Northern California and Nevada.

Firing attributes the figure to the growing number of retirees in Southern Nevada and seniors looking for change.

"Oftentimes they just want something new," she said. "They've been working at the same job 30 years and they want something refreshing. Peace Corps is a real break for them."

For some it's a chance to stay active and face new challenges. In the 1960s only 1 percent of volunteers were over age 50. That percentage grew to 4 percent in the 1970s, then to 8 percent in the 1980s. In the 1990s 9 percent of the volunteers were over 60.

Because seniors are more respected in other countries, they have an advantage in the field, Firing said. "They have a wealth of experience and realistic expectations of the challenges they'll face. They also have the maturity to help them deal with challenges."

Age doesn't slow Stoehr down.

"You're sort of ageless when you're in there," Stoehr said. "Everything depends on what you can do. You have to be very flexible, very patient, with these people."

In Haiti Stoehr worked as a nurse in small clinics run by a Catholic order of nuns in a poor village with very little food. There were no resident doctors.

Common ailments were body rashes, diarrhea, worms and dehydration from the diarrhea. Immunization shots were provided at the clinic. Staff members made house calls to those who didn't register for shots.

Living was primitive, but Stoehr said she was prepared. "Before I went in I had made up my mind," she said.

Political unrest in Haiti caused Stoehr and other volunteers to be evacuated after eight months. Because of this she knew she would take a second assignment -- a 1991 trip to Dominica, an island between Guadalupe and St. Martin, where she worked in a small hospital.

She said she hadn't planned on a third trip. But after returning from Dominica, she became restless and returned to the corps in 1995. She was sent to Jamaica.

"I don't want to just take it easy," she said. "I love what I do. I've been a nurse for 50 years. I wouldn't want it any other way."

Stoehr has no idea where she will be living when she returns to Jamaica next month. After two months of orientation she and other volunteers will be sent to rural areas.

"The fun of experiencing a different country is experiencing it through their eyes," she said. "You're in there because you want something different."

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