7:45 AM
Five drivers leave the parking lot headed for their respective rider’s homes with 8 am pickup times. Three riders are delivered to medical appointments, the fourth rider is dropped off at church and the last rider goes to Publix. Dial-A-Ride employs 10 drivers and has five vans, four of which are equipped with wheelchairs. Approximately 10% of its riders are confined to wheelchairs.

8:45 AM
Driver Mark Wilner picks up Andy Pope, a resident at Pablo Hamlet, at Publix. Nicknamed “The Pope” by drivers (“I’m driving The Pope,” they will say), he suffered a stroke three years and is no longer able to drive. Although most of his facilities have returned to normal, his future appeared bleak on the night of his stroke.

While laying on a bed in the emergency room, “I could feel the pressure leaving my body and I was literally left for dead. The doctor said he was covering me up with a sheet when I started kicking and talking out loud,” the Air Force veteran says. “I kept saying, ‘I’m not ready, God, I’ve got more work to do.’ I could feel the energy coming back to my body.”

Pope’s passion throughout his life has been using technology to help improve lives of disabled children and members of the military. While living in his native Michigan, he designed a specially built tricycle for a girl in a body cast and another tricycle for a young lady whose hands were attached to her shoulders.

9:00 AM
BCOA Executive Director Lori Anderson receives an unexpected call from a local donor who wishes to remain anonymous. “She stated she was doing something different this year and giving $100,000 if we had a project in mind. Little did she know our oldest van had died a week prior and was just sitting in our parking lot. We didn’t know what we were going to do, and now we do. We can purchase a new Abilitrax van within a month and get it on the road and working like nothing had happened. We were so grateful to this donor. I’m not sure if she realized what she had truly done for us. It was an incredible gift at the right time.”

9:12 AM
Driver Jessika Smith picks up a rider for a medical appointment. This rider lives alone, like the majority of riders, and in some cases, the DAR’s drivers and staff might be their only contact with other humans on the days they ride. According to Jeff Anderson of the Journal of Primary Prevention, social isolation “leads to numerous detrimental health effects in older adults, including increased risk for all-cause mortality, dementia, re-hospitalization and number of falls.”

“The number one preventative method to isolation is access to adequate transportation,” Anderson says. “A person having access to safe and reliable transportation allows them to engage in social, educational and cultural activities. This becomes key to their quality of life. BCOA combats elderly loneliness with our free transportation service, Dial-A-Ride.”

10:14 AM
Back at the office, the phone rings all day, answered by either Operations Manager Bob Hughes or by Don Wicker, a driver who also steps in to assist in the office at times. Occasionally, Joanne Craft, a Dial-A-Ride legend whose service to the organization dates back more than twenty years, helps out. Every Dial-a-Ride staff member agrees that there is rarely a slow time of the day. By the end of this day, drivers will have completed 60 pickups, or segments.

Dial-a-Ride utilizes a web-based trip routing program called PeriScope that coordinates the pickups and helps keep the vans running smoothly. Dial-a-Ride had 1,138 segments – approximately 150 regular riders — in April, 1,168 segments in May, and 1,211 in June, a 40% increase from June 2024. Dial-a-Ride has served 256 riders for the year, 74 whom are new riders.

Although drivers use GPS to travel the busy roads of the Jax Beaches, they are savvy about taking back streets to avoid logjams on Third Street. While three out of four rides involve medical appointments, Dial-a-Ride delivers clients to destinations such as hair salons, churches, restaurants, the library, and even to the beach. On this day,  one rider called for a ride to the cannabis dispensary.

11:45 AM
Wilner picks up Sharon Fisher and her son and caretaker Ed at Baptist Beaches Medical Center. Sharon went in for blood work, and because she had to fast this morning, she’s hungry and ready to return home. Unprompted, she raves about Dial-a-Ride’s drivers and grades the service as an “A+ rating.”

She’s been a regular for six years, mainly riding from her home in Mayport to medical appointments and Winn Dixie. Ed Fisher jokes that his biggest complaint is that the drivers don’t serve a breakfast buffet for the riders.  Sharon calls  Ed a “blessing from God,” and Mark adds that Ed is a terrific caregiver.

12:21 PM
Wilner heads back to Jacksonville Beach to pick up Nance Boylan from a medical appointment. She’s been riding Dial-a-Ride for one year and she expresses her gratitude for the service taking care of her when she was seriously ill. A published poet, she lived in Key West and headed the island’s poets community for a number of years before moving here in 2023 to receive better health care.

1:45 PM
Board member Sarah White is on the phone contacting caterers to solicit pricing for the Dial-A-Ride 50^th Anniversary party. The event will be held Thursday, Sept. 4 (6-9pm) at The Yards, 254 Alta Mar Dr., Ponte Vedra Beach. Tickets are $50 in advance, $75 at the door. Tickets can be purchased here.

White is a legacy board member. Her grandmother, Gail Ennis, and her father, Alan Ennis, served as BCOA presidents and were instrumental in keeping the non-profit strong during the earlier years.

3:32 PM
Doris Driggers is rolled out of the Fresenius Kidney Care Center in her wheelchair after a lengthy session of dialysis. Many dialysis patients feel cold during and after treatments because their blood cools as it circulates outside the body in the dialysis machine. When the weather turns hot, some patients prefer to sit in the sun outside the building. As Doris warms up, she talks about growing up in Atlanta and in Columbus, Georgia, and how she’s enjoyed fishing all her life since her father owned a bait and tackle shop when she was a young girl.

As Errol Bos secures Doris in the Dial-a-Ride van, she says he’s her special driver. When questioned if she says that about all the drivers, he confirms that indeed he’s become her favorite because he plays her genre of music, rock and pop from 1965-85, during her rides. She had to stop driving several years ago and has relied on Dial-a-Ride, “this wonderful service” since then.

Doris is one of nine dialysis patients receiving treatments three times a week. Another dialysis patient, Joe Merle, is a favorite among all Dial-a-Ride riders. He was born with a birth defect and was abandoned by his birth mother at a New York City hospital. Now in his thirties, his uplifting outlook is contagious to everyone he meets. The clinic manager at kidney care center calls him their advocate because he brightens up the clinic. He calls himself the clinic ambassador. “I try my best to keep a positive attitude. I’ll be like that until the day I die,” he says.

After Bos drops off Doris it’s almost four o’clock and he has delivered his final rider of the day. He estimates on some busy days he logs up to 200 miles.

Final daily pickups are usually scheduled between 3:30 and 4 pm. Hughes stresses, “We would never leave someone stranded. We don’t go home until the last person is safely delivered home.”

4:55 PM
Anderson, board members and staff, along with Baptist Beaches President Jarret Dreicer are gathered at the Palms Presbyterian Church for a ribbon cutting ceremony to celebrate Baptist’s donation for a new van valued at $100,000.