Our Team

Staff
Governance

clinical Staff
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Betsy Wharton, RN, MSN
Nurse Team Manager
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A graduate of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Betsy began her nursing career during the height of the AIDS epidemic where she worked in hospice and home health in Seattle. Since then, she has worked in maternal child and public health in far flung places from the Navajo reservation to Peshawar Pakistan.  Since moving to Port Angeles in 2001, Betsy worked with First Step Family Support Center and most recently taught the Health Occupation program at Port Angeles High School.  In her spare time, Betsy enjoys travel, kayaking, gardening, and fermenting. You may even recognize her as the pickle lady at the farmer’s market.Betsy is thrilled to return to her hospice roots  “It feels like coming home.”

Haley Blackburn-Jacobs RN, BSN
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With 18 years of experience as a Registered Nurse, Haley brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to VHOCC. In addition to her background in critical care, Haley’s passion for helping others has resulted in her dedicating the last five years to hospice and palliative care. Haley enjoys gardening, hiking, exploring, and traveling far and wide. Originally from the deserts of the Southwest, she has now lived in Port Angeles for just over a year and is excited to be a part of this amazing community.

Cristina Eppers, RN
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Cristina moved to Sequim from Wenatchee in September 2020, where her career was most recently focused on massage with elderly and medically compromised patients. Through more than a decade of compassionate, holistic care as an advanced massage therapist/RN, and through her experience of end-of-life care as a family member/caregiver, she has gained some understanding of what many hospice patients and their families might be experiencing. She is very happy to have joined the VHOCC family and to be able to help provide a comforting, personalized patient/family care experience for others at the end of life.

Cristina spends her free time sailing, biking, paddling, volunteering, traveling, playing in the snow and hiking with her husband, gardening, walking her senior rescue dogs, fledging her 17-year-old son, and getting together with girlfriends.

Trisha Buckingham, RN
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Trisha is passionate and thoughtful. She loves nature and believes there is nothing more natural than the dying process. Trish considers it a great honor to know, care for, and guide people through the dying process. She grew up here in Port Angeles, and after working as a travel nurse for several years, Trish realized there is no place more beautiful or grounding than the Olympic Peninsula. She moved home and started working for VHOCC in 2018. Trish enjoys working with herbs, hiking, reading, gardening, bird watching, and spending quality time with people she loves.

Jennifer Constable, RN
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An RN for over 9 years, Jennifer has worked in several areas of nursing including ER, psychiatric nursing, and now hospice. Jennifer relocated to the Olympic Peninsula in March 2020 from her home state of Texas. Jennifer enjoys SCUBA diving, hiking, and running, and looks forward to many years of service with VHOCC.
Tammy Belle Dedmore, CNA
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Tammy’s love for people and desire to help others through hard times are what drew her to work with VHOCC. Comforting others, she says, brings her life great satisfaction. Having lived her entire life in Port Angeles, Tammy counts the Olympic Peninsula’s salt water and mountains as precious. In addition, she enjoys visiting family, singing, fishing, and hiking.

Anne L'Heureux, RN, BSN

Anne’s professional interests have evolved greatly during her 28 years as a nurse. She has worked on medical-surgical units, critical care units, and in nursing education. She is compassionate, thoughtful, and an advocate of a patient’s right to self-determination, personal dignity, and autonomy. She is eager to share her professional experience and passion for nursing with the VHOCC community. She is honored to serve them.

Anne is an East Coast girl, who became an adult in San Francisco, and now calls the Olympic Peninsula home. Her interests include yoga, walking, and reading. Anne is excited by all things food-related, especially the sharing of food, its history, its preparation, and its presentation.

Molly Wallace, RN, BSN

‍Molly has lived all over—born in Durham, North Carolina, raised in Louisville, Kentucky, and on the move ever since—finally landing in Port Angeles in 2015. Along the way she became a nurse, with her first hospice experience at Rainbow Hospice & Palliative Care in Chicago in 2014. It was then Molly realized that hospice is where she belongs—providing compassionate end of life care for free to those in the community. In her spare time, Molly enjoys hiking, walking her dogs, camping, and eating good food with friends and family.


Gary Schneider, BS, BSN, RN, CHPN
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After his time as an Army paratrooper, and then as a member of The Old Guard (the Army’s ceremonial unit), Gary became a firefighter/advanced life support paramedic. Later in life, he felt nursing was where he should be. In nursing school, Gary chose to study to become an ICU nurse and took extra classes in the ICU as part of the clinical portion of his nursing program. However, an experience taking care of a hospital patient on “comfort measures” pushed him directly into the path of hospice. Gary has been an RN for about ten years and has been in the field of hospice most of that time. Sometimes, when people ask him how he can be a hospice nurse, he commonly replies, “How could I not?”

Mission Support Staff
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JooRi Jun
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
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As a provider, Dr. JooRi Jun has always held an all-encompassing perspective regarding the needs of patients and their families at the end of life. She is committed to compassionate care and service for patients on all levels—physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and social. She received her Doctorate of Naturopathic Medicine from Bastyr University and is a licensed primary care physician in the state of Washington. She is also a trained spiritual care provider. She brings nine years of leadership and management experience with her to VHOCC. She grew up internationally before coming to the United States for college and now lives on the Olympic Peninsula with her husband, also a naturopathic doctor, and their curious and fearless preschooler. 

Astrid Raffinpeyloz
VOLUNTEER SERVICES MANAGER
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Astrid obtained an MA in Political Science in France and an MA in Transpersonal Counseling Psychology in California. She held various managerial positions in non-profit groups, small businesses, and large corporations.  Following a close friend’s death, her heart found its place in hospice and she started to volunteer in 1996, primarily in California (Sutter VNA, Zen Hospice Project, Hinds Hospice) before moving to the Olympic Peninsula and finding VHOCC. She was invited to join the Board in May 2015 and accepted the position of Volunteer Services Manager in January 2016. She and her husband raised 3 adopted boys while living on a ranch, and continue their love of growing food with a small microgreens business.
Julie Kramer
DEVELOPMENT MANAGER
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Julie Kramer is an empathetic nonprofit servant-leader with a proven track record in health and social services fundraising. Her passion is relationship building, working with volunteers, and cultivating a thriving culture of giving. Her 20 years of experience in strategic planning, stewardship, branding, events, major gifts, and legacy giving have yielded exponential results. Julie enjoys spending time with family and friends, walks, cooking healthy gourmet dishes with local ingredients such as seafood, and taking pictures of the snowcapped mountains, fields of flowers, and the marina.
                                                                     Anita Chilton
OFFICE ADMINISTRATOR
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As a customer-centric administrative, client services, and hospitality professional, Anita finds fulfillment in contributing to the needs and care of others while creating efficiencies and ensuring smooth daily operations. With prior employment at nationally known construction firms and top-ranked inns, Anita brings her attention to detail, care, and organizational skills to VHOCC. Her family has been on the receiving end of Hospice care, so she appreciates this level of care and wants to give back to the community. This North Carolina native lived in California for 16 years before relocating to the Olympic Peninsula in 2018 due to its beauty, diversity and smaller town living. She enjoys hiking, cycling, photography, cooking, and spending time with friends.

Governance
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Peter Raiswell
PRESIDENT
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Peter’s wide-ranging career experience includes finance, medical technology, and a variety of leadership positions. He also serves as Commodore of the Auxiliary for Coast Guard District 13, covering Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana. From 2009 to 2019 Peter served with the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a field deployed Chief of Staff in federally declared major disasters.
Nancy Bargar, CPA (Retired)
TREASURER, FINANCE COMMITTEE CHAIR
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Nancy Bargar, retired certified public accountant, has been involved with numerous nonprofits as a professional and volunteer. She has an undergraduate degree in economics from Whitman College and a Master in Professional Accounting from the University of Washington. Nancy has lived in Port Angeles for over 12 years.
Michael J. Bucierka, M.S.W
VICE-PRESIDENT, SECRETARY

Michael is a retired social worker who spent over thirty years working with various disadvantaged populations, including 14 years as a Child Protective Service worker in Port Angeles. He graduated from the University of Maryland School of Social Word and Community Planning in 1989 and has lived in Sequim since 1997.

At Large Directors
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Wendy Brown, RN
DIRECTOR
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During a 30 year career in nursing at both the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Wendy worked to provide direct patient and to ensure the protection of people who were “subjects” in research studies focused in oncology and HIV/AIDS. She retired in 2014 as the UW Assistant Director for Research Quality and Compliance where she developed the institution’s first research education and monitoring program.  
Sally Featherstone, BA, MA, BSN, RN, MN, CNS
DIRECTOR

Sally has a long association with Hospice, from her early days as a Public Health Nurse in King County when she made home visits to dying patients and to bereaved young parents of SIDS babies. Those experiences inspired her to follow a career focused on the care of persons impacted with all manner of losses, from personal losses related to jobs, family, divorce, to loss of body functions and ultimately death.
David Gilbert, PE, EM, FASCE
DIRECTOR

A retired mining engineer, Dave graduated from the Colorado School of Mines in 1960. He had a forty-year international career of construction engineering and management for large mining and petrochemical projects. Dave has been a volunteer at VHOCC since 2010.
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Ed Hopfner, MD
DIRECTOR

A graduate of University of Washington, Ed is a semi-retired family medical physician practicing in Port Angeles since 1962.  He started the PARRC Free Medical Clinic in 2001, and is still seeing patients at VIMO and Dungeness Valley Health and Wellness Clinic. Ed is a retired Navy doctor and remains active in Voices for Veterans and Stand Downs.
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Stuart Koop
DIRECTOR
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Loriann Hamilton Ridgeway
DIRECTOR

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Ted Ripley
DIRECTOR


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