Starting with the Person: The Life Story and Human Rights

By Virginia Bell and David Troxel Rebecca Riley The Best Friends™ approach has been shaped by real people—people with dementia we have been privileged to meet and work with over the years. One of our earliest and most important “teachers” was a college friend of Virginia Bell. Rebecca Riley was a nurse educator who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in her 50s. As she traveled what we now call the continuum of care—from home care, to day center care, to residential care—we were happy to share almost all of the dementia journey with her, including hundreds of hours spent together…