Name: Mildred Ramsey
Age: 68
Education: University of Hawaii
Occupation: Administrator, Honolulu Gerontology Program
Hobbies: Church.

"My father was a minister and my family was always helping people," she said.

"They'd take people in our home although they didn't have very much income, and they were totally concerned about individuals . . . This is the way I was brought up and I think it's never left."

Ramsey is an advocate for the health and welfare of senior citizens, an effort that recently won her a community service award in a nationwide program sponsored by Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Ramsey, 68, a Kailua resident, is among six winners nationally being considered for a $10,000 grand prize, to be awarded July 16 in Corbin, Ky.

A founder of the Hawaii Pacific Gerontological Society and the community's Elder Abuse and Neglect Task Force, she devotes her time to helping the elderly.

Her latest efforts begin on July 1st, when a new senior case-management program begins.

The program - which focuses on empowering families to handle their own cases - helps ease the family's dependence on case workers while promoting family involvement with their elderly relative, she said.

"To try to cut back on the costs of the long-term care," said Ramsey, "we want to help people help themselves more."

And as chairwoman of the Assisted Living Options Task Force, Ramsey is at the forefront of the assisted-living issue, striving to find cheaper and more human ways for the elderly who need some assistance with living but who do not require nursing home care. Hawaii trails the mainland in these programs, she said.

"What we're trying to do is to get developers to build assisted living facilities because they're so much less expensive and more humane than nursing homes. Those of us in the field are very concerned about the enormous cost of being in a nursing home.

"It's a very inhumane setting as far as I'm concerned. People lose their autonomy and they don't have much of a life in nursing home."

Meanwhile, Ramsey says, she can't help but joke among friends about her $2,500 award.

"There's been a lot of laughs involved with it, even though its a wonderful thing," she said.

"It would have been so different if it had come out of Washington or something, but its Kentucky Fried Chicken."