Dorothy Salomonsky never expected that an effort to help a few vulnerable community members would grow into one of Virginia’s leading public guardianship programs. But more than 30 years after helping launch the JFS Personal Affairs Management (PAM) program at Jewish Family Service of Tidewater, her work has touched thousands of lives.
In honor of America at 250, Salomonsky is being recognized by United Jewish Federation of Tidewater as an Outstanding Jewish American in Tidewater.
In the mid-1990s, while Salomonsky was working part-time for the Jewish Community Center, Jewish Family Service of Tidewater received a grant for a part-time “bill payer” position to assist older adults who needed help managing finances. Salomonsky took the job. From that position, she began encountering people who required guardianship services, but there was no local model for how to assist them.
“We had Jewish community members who needed guardianships, and nobody really knew how to do it,” Salomonsky recalls.
Working alongside Harry Graber (then JFS CEO), and local attorneys, Salomonsky helped create a structure that would eventually shape public guardianship across Virginia. The model, in which an agency serves as guardian with oversight from an advisory committee, became the foundation for the state’s public guardian law.
Today, JFS’s guardianship program serves more than 1,200 clients and employs approximately 75 staff across local and remote teams.
“We knew from the beginning there was a need,” Salomonsky says. “In the late 90s, we had 10 clients. Then in 2005, we had 60. Now we keep a steady number over 1,000 clients year after year.”
For Salomonsky, however, success is not measured in numbers. The heart of the work is dignity.
“By the time someone comes into the guardianship program, they’ve already gone beyond their worst day,” she says. “The point is for them to still feel human. They need to feel seen.”
That philosophy shapes the program’s approach to care. The guardian representative acts not just as a case manager, but as a friend.
One story from the late 1990s remains with Salomonsky.
A former Navy nurse with dementia had recently moved into a facility. When she turned 100, JFS staff attended a large celebration for her at the facility, complete with decorations, food, and entertainment. But throughout the party, the woman sat quietly, staring at her hands.
Then, her guardian representative brought her an assortment of Hershey chocolate bars, and suddenly the woman lit up, spending the rest of the afternoon happily arranging and admiring them.
“It taught me that the big party didn’t matter,” Salomonsky says. “What mattered was that someone knew her well enough to know she loved Hershey bars.”
That same commitment to individualized care extends to clients living on the margins. Salomonsky describes one man who chooses to remain homeless, despite the program’s efforts to help him find housing.
“But when he’s sick, or there’s a storm, he calls us,” she says. “He knows someone will be there for him.”
Salomonsky’s sense of communal responsibility stretches back generations. Both her family and her husband’s family have deep roots in Tidewater – since the early 1900s. In fact, her grandfather was among the founders of Brith Sholom Lodge.
Her great-grandfather, Abraham Silverman, owned a fish market in Norfolk and on Friday nights, he would often bring newly arrived Jewish immigrants home from the port to share Shabbat dinner with the family.
“My great-grandmother would make huge trays of gefilte fish from the market,” Salomonsky says. “I grew up hearing those stories from my mother, and they taught me that you show up for your community. You welcome people in.”
That’s a way of way of life Salomonsky has lived with her husband, Edwin, and modeled for her four children and seven grandchildren.
Though she never initially planned to become a Jewish communal professional, Salomonsky says helping others through the Jewish community always felt natural.
Now, decades after helping build a program that changed lives across the Commonwealth, Salomonsky remains focused on the same simple lesson she learned from her family and from the clients she has served: meaningful care starts with truly seeing another person.
Her advice to future Jewish leaders is equally straightforward: “Get involved. And don’t be afraid to try something new.”
Interested in nominating someone to be recognized as an Outstanding Jewish American in Tidewater? Visit JewishVA.org/TidewaterHeroes or contact Sierra Lautman at SLautman@UJFT.org.