Honor a life with a tribute that brings comfort to families and hope to future survivors.
Stroke Awareness Oregon exists to minimize death and disability from stroke through prevention education and to support the best life possible for stroke warriors and their loved ones.
Stroke Awareness Oregon will be the leader in promoting the reduction of stroke related death and disability through improved brain health, enhanced stroke recovery and rehabilitation through support for stroke warriors.
Stroke Awareness Oregon believes in maintaining the highest standards of ethics, respect, integrity, service to others, equity, confidentiality, accountability, compassion and excellence.
SAO is a non-profit created by physicians, stroke survivors, and community members, and it exists “to eliminate disability and death from stroke through awareness of causes, symptoms, and treatment, and through recovery support”. The fifth leading cause of death in Oregon and the greatest source of disability worldwide, stroke is a medical emergency by striking over 800,000 people nationwide each year. Stroke Awareness Oregon is making a difference in stroke outcomes and recovery through these four goals:
Stroke Awareness Oregon (SAO) began in 2017 when a small group of stroke survivors, healthcare professionals, and community members came together around a shared concern: too many people did not recognize the warning signs of stroke, understand their risk, or know where to turn for support after a stroke occurred. The effort was led by stroke survivor Lawnae Hunter, whose own experience revealed how profoundly stroke can change a person’s life, and neurologist Dr. Steve Goins, who shared a commitment to improving stroke prevention and community education. Their work grew into a grassroots movement, and in 2017 Stroke Awareness Oregon officially became a nonprofit organization based in Central Oregon.
From the beginning, SAO has focused on both sides of the stroke journey—preventing stroke whenever possible and helping individuals and families navigate life after stroke. The organization established a mission to reduce disability and death from stroke through education about risk factors, prevention, symptoms, and treatment; to make B.E.F.A.S.T. a household safety message so people can recognize a stroke and call 9-1-1 without delay; and to provide stroke survivors, caregivers, and families with meaningful recovery support. Partnerships with healthcare organizations, emergency responders, businesses, and community leaders have helped extend that message throughout Central Oregon and increasingly across the state.
As SAO has grown, so have the ways it serves the stroke community. Educational outreach has been joined by survivor and caregiver support groups, peer-to-peer programs, hospital and community partnerships, and resources designed to address the physical, emotional, social, and practical realities of recovery. SAO has also helped share the voices of stroke survivors and families through books such as Just Say “Yes” to Life! and Stroke Is a Family Affair: Stories of Recovery from Families, Friends, and Loved Ones. These programs reflect an important lesson learned throughout SAO’s history: stroke affects far more than one individual, and recovery is strengthened by connection, understanding, education, and hope.
Today, Stroke Awareness Oregon has grown from a small Central Oregon grassroots organization into a statewide resource dedicated exclusively to stroke awareness, prevention, and recovery support. Its history is measured not only by programs developed or communities reached, but by people who recognized the signs of stroke because they had learned B.E.F.A.S.T., survivors who found encouragement through others who had traveled the same road, and families who discovered that they did not have to navigate recovery alone. With the continued support of donors, volunteers, healthcare partners, board members, and communities throughout Oregon, SAO continues working toward its vision of eliminating disability and death from stroke while helping stroke survivors and their families live their best possible lives.
• To educate about stroke causes, prevention and treatment options.
• To make B.E.F.A.S.T. a household safety word.
• To support the recovery of stroke survivors and their families.
• To do this work in partnership with the medical community, businesses and the community.
We invite you to join our dedicated group of volunteers and SAO staff to help fulfill SAO’s mission and purpose.
“Of all the work I’ve done in my life, the most rewarding has been when I’ve volunteered for a worthy cause, such as with Stroke Awareness Oregon. To volunteer is to care, and to want to make a difference in the world. Now more than ever, our world needs people like us to step up, and provide a wholehearted service without expectation of getting anything in return. But we volunteers, do receive so much in return: the satisfaction and joy of knowing we’ve done something to improve the lives of others. To me, that is invaluable.”- Lili Alpaugh, Founding Volunteer Coordinator
To learn more about Stroke Awareness Oregon fundraisers, resources, and volunteer opportunities, please connect with our team via email or call us at 541-323-5641
Thank you for your interest in Stroke Awareness Oregon! We look forward to connecting with you further. You can reach the SAO team by phone, email, or in-person at the SAO office in Bend, Oregon. If you or a loved one are displaying signs of stroke please Call 9-1-1 immediately. Time = Brain!
by Jake Sheaffer
“I once threw a canister of my supplement powder at the wall and dented it. That’s something I can’t imagine ever doing before my stroke, but it’s just another part of my recovery to work on.”
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On an early October weekend in 2019, Alesha Goodman and her longtime boyfriend Drew hiked over 50 miles of rugged desert landscape in the Ochoco National Forest in Central Oregon. They were on a nine-day hunting trip they’d been planning for months. While Drew streaked up the steep slopes of sagebrush and loose rock, Alesha tarried behind breathing heavily, fighting the searing pain radiating from the base of her skull. An active thirty-four-year-old who frequented local gyms, walked her dog daily, and hiked on weekends, Alesha never suspected the severe neck pain and nausea she’d had for the past week and a half were signs of an impending stroke. And not just one stroke, but two. Two potentially fatal strokes that would occur within an hour of each other the day after she returned from the Ochocos.
An only child, Alesha was close to her parents and her grandmother who lived on her parents’ property later in life. As a kid, she delivered newspapers in her Bend, OR neighborhood, and in her spare time, she wrote children’s books for fun and read voraciously, prompting close friends to refer to her as a “living encyclopedia of odd information.”
On the Monday morning after she got home, Alesha sat in traffic at a parkway off -ramp, still in discomfort from the neck pain and the nausea. She had new symptoms, too, dizziness and feeling faint. Regardless of the pain, she readied herself for work, but she had an uneasy feeling about her job.
Over the weekend, Alesha had received multiple text messages from her employer, a jewelry company in Central Oregon, about an issue with her company email and password, but with no cell reception, she couldn’t respond to her manager’s concerns. After searching through Alesha’s desk for her email password and not finding it, but instead finding an important legal document she’d already dealt with but had not yet disclosed to her boss, the company hired a specialist to get around the digital safeguards. That day, Alesha was let go from her position.
Purchase the Book to Learn More About Alesha’s Journey!