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NEIGHBORS
SCOTTSDALE PROGRESS | WWW.SCOTTSDALE.ORG | AUGUST 14, 2022
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Centenarian still active Red Cross volunteer BY ALEX GALLAGHER Progress Staff Writer
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t age 101, Betty Grenig is the American Red Cross’ oldest volunteer, serving the nonprofit for over 80 years across the nation and even overseas. Because of her efforts, the Scottsdale woman was honored last year with a Presidents Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021 issued by President Joe Biden. Grenig, who turns 101 tomorrow, Aug. 15, said she felt “confused” by the certificate because she felt she was just doing her patriotic duty for the past eight decades. Grenig still remembers when her mother told her she should volunteer for the Red Cross in 1939, when she was a 17-yearold high school student in Long Beach, California. Her mother had been deeply patriotic and had read a sign that the Red Cross was looking for people who knew how Betty Grenig of Scottsdale turns 101 tomorrow, to knit socks for soldiers in the Aug. 15. Here she displays a certificate she reArmy. ceived from President Joe Biden thanking her for “You can knit Betty, get busy” her service to the American Red Cross, where she were the words her mother told is the nonprofit’s oldest and longest-serving volunteer. (David Minton/Progress Staff Photographer) her that changed her life. Betty gathered six of her friends to go to the Red Cross and knit teering provided Grenig with some of socks and caps to go under soldiers’ hel- the fondest memories of her teenage years. mets. “We always had knitting needles and “We didn’t bother with sweaters, whenever we were sitting, we’d get the which was too much,” she said with a needles and start moving,” she said. laugh. see GRENIG page 16 However, her earliest days of volun-
Carrie Crary of Carrie’s Healing Cafe, became familiar with the challenges cancer poses through her work as in the VA radiation department and her only personal battle with the disease. (David Minton/Progress Staff Photographer)
Carrie’s Healing Cafe offers cancer care
BY ALEX GALLAGHER Progress Staff Writer
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arrie Crary is no stranger to cancer care. Crary had worked as a nurse in the radiation department at the Phoenix Veterans Administration and had survived one bout with cancer before becoming a registered nurse. Then, in 2018, she received the news that changed her life. Crary learned that she had stage four breast cancer and the outcome didn’t look good. “Initially, I was just freaked out,” she said. “I was (having) anxiety attacks in the middle of the night and it was just devastating being told that you only have so long to live. It was traumatizing.”
Crary said she began seeing signs about alternative care that she attributes to a higher power. “God started putting things in my life that led me to start researching alternative care,” Crary said. “I went into a smoothie shop and the owner sat down with me and started talking to me about all these therapies and different things like to take and to do as far as juicing and different things. “I sat on a bench at work at the VA and had a patient come and sit next to me and just randomly start talking to me about all these things they knew nothing about – what I’m going through – and it just kept coming at me through friends, family and strangers alike.” From there, Crary began doing her re-
see CRARY page 17