Community Nursing Services (CNS) is proud to be home to the best Volunteer Coordinator in Utah, and you don’t just have to take our word for it – the Homecare & Hospice Association of Utah named CNS Director of Volunteers, Tracy Ruiz, the Volunteer Coordinator of the Year during its 2025 Hero Awards Ceremony. Tracy provides an invaluable service to CNS and its patients, overseeing all volunteer efforts, from hospice volunteers to those who help make the annual Art & Soup Charity Event possible. She also coordinates the popular CNS Wish and Honor Salute programs.
“It was humbling,” said Tracy, of receiving the award. “It was an honor because I’m in good company with a very wonderful team of people. It meant a lot
to be recognized for that.”
Tracy has spent her career working in healthcare, starting in administration at elderly care facilities, then transitioning to being a volunteer coordinator in 2004.
“I ran assisted living facilities for about 16 years and then left that,” Tracy said. “I got a call from a friend of mine that worked for a hospice agency. She was their marketer, and she said, ‘Hey, will you come in and talk to us about becoming a volunteer coordinator?’ I had never heard the term. We had used hospice many times in the facility but never knew that there was this role. So, I did, they offered me the job, and I took it because I love working with elderly people. I love the senior community.
“It was probably the first couple of weeks I was with the hospice company, and we had a young mother of two pass away. Her boys were 12 and 8. I had never even met her, and I went home and told my husband, ‘What was I thinking? I was thinking only old people die, and I don’t know that I can do this.’ I went back in and talked to our director, and she said, ‘It can be sad a lot of times, but look at what we were able to bring to help her and her family as a hospice team,’ and I thought, ‘Yeah, I can do this.’ It’s pretty cool to be able to do this work and have the people who share that passion, the volunteers.”
Tracy joined CNS in 2020, where she continues to work with the amazing group of volunteers who sign up to help with the variety of services, programs, and events.
“What I like best is getting to work with an amazing group of people,” she said. “Volunteers are amazing. The time they give, the commitment, their unselfish way. And, you think it’s people who are at home, retired, doing nothing, and they do a couple of hours, but it’s not. It’s business owners. It’s students that go to school full time. It’s people married with kids. I think it’s amazing.”
Amazing is also the perfect description for Tracy, whom we thank for all of her hard work and congratulate her on a well-deserved award as Volunteer Coordinator of the Year!