Kraushaar extends loving hand to seniors

Mikki Kraushaar's sole desire in life has been to love people.

As executive director of the Silver Key Senior Services program, she has quietly shared her personal philosophy with the residents of Colorado Springs. Her name may not have appeared in a lot of headlines in the past 25 years, but Kraushaar's steadfast work exemplifies a positive byproduct of the city's growth. Because of people like Kraushaar, Colorado Springs has become a city with heart, even as it tussles with omnipresent growing pains.

Kraushaar's love for others began at an early age. Growing up in Pontiac, Mich., in the 1940s, Militza Tosich felt like she didn't belong. Her father was a Romanian immigrant, her mother's parents came from Romania, and Serbian was the primary language spoken at home. With her tightly plaited hair and heavy brown stockings, she felt like an outsider.

Excluded from children's games, she spent a lot of time with elderly people, mostly Eastern European immigrants who had befriended her. Through them, she learned that seniors -- even at their frailest -- can be extraordinarily loving and courageous.

They soon began calling her ``dadoika,'' Romanian for a woman who goes from place to place looking after people.

In 1971, Kraushaar was hired to develop Colorado Springs' Silver Key program, with help from a $15,000 federal grant. In the beginning, it was a shoestring operation run by Kraushaar. Today, it is the largest elderly service agency in the region. Silver Key serves approximately 15,000 senior citizens who receive home-delivered meals, rides, counseling and housing from the nonprofit organization each year. Silver Key has more than 2,000 volunteers.

Kraushaar often works 12- to 14-hour days while overseeing a staff of 60, raising money, and speaking to the public about seniors' needs. She takes two briefcases -- full of work -- home each weekend.

But Kraushaar's work isn't just a job -- it's a ministry that takes her to hospitals, nursing homes and to the homes of the elderly, sometimes for tasks like changing an out-of-reach light bulb.

She once received a letter from an elderly woman that read, ``Silver Key is the nicest church I have knowed.''

So what keeps this 62-year-old woman with ladylike charm and shrewd business sense going after all these years?

``My great love for the elderly,'' she said. ``It really has been such a privilege and a joy. I don't know how to describe it other than to say that it's one of the most beautiful love stories in the world.''