Choi, who was in between jobs in her financial-services career, stopped looking for a full-time job and devoted herself to care for her mother. But she realized she still needed help. It took her seven months to find a Korean-speaking home health aide.
Then, others in the Korean community contacted Choi. "Where can I find [someone like] her, someone who speaks Korean?" they asked Choi.
In 2004, Choi opened Korean American Senior Services of Pennsylvania to train and provide Korean-speaking home health aides to those in the immigrant community.
She soon found out that the need was even greater - there wasn't an agency that could provide home health aides who spoke other Asian languages.
So, in late 2005, her agency expanded to become Penn Asian Senior Services, for which Choi is the executive director. Based in Jenkintown, it now trains and provides home health aides who can speak eight languages: Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Khmer (the Cambodian language), Indonesian, Filipino and English.
Choi says her agency now serves 248 clients in Philadelphia, Montgomery, Delaware, Chester and Bucks counties and employs about 250 home health aides.
Most clients are Asian immigrants, but the agency also serves non-Asian clients. Many people are referred by the Philadelphia Corporation for Aging, Choi said.
Choi, 63, who came to this country from Korea in 1971 after being hired by a trading company, was one of 10 people nationwide recently awarded $125,000 by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for improving health care in underserved populations.
She is considering using that money to set up a day-care center for seniors - "even though they are homebound, they would like to socialize," she said - or to fund research to obtain statistics on Asian seniors.
Choi's mother died last year at age 93. Choi now takes care of her mother-in-law.
