Eisenhower Health's Junior Volunteer Program
Eisenhower Health’s volunteer office will take the names of those interested in April, interview candidates in May and host orientation in June. The program - one four-to-five-hour volunteer shift a week - is completed by the end of July.
Junior volunteers are stationed in various areas around the main hospital in Rancho Mirage. In the hospital’s errand room, for example, junior volunteers escort patients, deliver items and assist in the discharge of patients going home from their hospital stay. The hospital’s longstanding program of adult volunteers encourages older adults to work alongside the junior volunteers, allowing the senior volunteers to mentor their younger counterparts.
In 2025, 35 high school students participated in the junior volunteer program. Read about a few of our outstanding volunteers from Palm Desert High School below.
Kharlann Zatarain
Age: 17
Why: “I just love making a big difference in my community. Being able to come to a different kind of environment with all ages and spending time with them and creating connections with other volunteers and patients is super fun.”
Best part: “When I’m in the ICU [Intensive Care Unit] and helping other people come to see their family members. Being able to be there for them even if you’re not saying much.”
Karl Zatarain
Age: 16
Why: With a desire to work on his conversational skills and earn volunteer hours, the older volunteers assured Karl he would improve and, “it really has shown,” he says. Also, Karl is planning a career in the medical field.
Best part: “I do enjoy discharging patients,” he says. “No one likes being cooped up in a hospital. They’re all happy to leave.” Also, he likes hearing the lullaby music played on the hospital’s sound system when a baby is born during his shift.
Emma Thompson
Age: 18
Why: Her fourth year of the program, she was working in the special procedures unit. “There’s nothing more to it than I love it. When I walk into the hospital, I feel like a different person. It all goes back to what I’ve always wanted to do: to help and serve others before myself,” she says. “I could spend the rest of my life doing this. People that we work with every day are probably going in for one of their scariest days of their lives. They’re getting procedures, they don’t know what’s going on. For me, to be able to just talk with them or just try and help them any certain way, makes me feel so happy.”
Best Part: “I love the people I’ve met,” she says. Working with the older volunteers, she says, “They’re so fun to talk to,” adding she still communicates with some of the past volunteers. “A little bit of kindness can go such a long way. I love to see people smile and any way I can make that happen, I’ll do it.”
Parisa Azody
Age: 17
Why: Her second year in the program, it’s important for Parisa to gain the real-world interactions inside of a hospital for her path toward physician assistant. “It’s really difficult to have that experience being a high school student,” she explains. “Getting to walk around the hospital and talk to patients and talk to people, it’s always very rewarding and eye-opening,” she adds. She also worked with breast cancer patients at the Eisenhower Lucy Curci Cancer Center. “It’s an extremely important experience for me to be able to be there and to support them and understand the fundamentals of working with patients that may be in tough spots.”
Best Part: “The connections and the experience that I get to have here. How it really is to be in a place that I want to be in the future.”
Hope Sterling
Age: 18
Why: In her third year in the program, Hope explains she returns each summer because “making a contribution to my community is important to me. Getting that experience and exposure to the medical field is also important to my career in the future.”
Best Part: Hope wants to pursue a career in oncology after having watched her grandfather be diagnosed with cancer multiple times. “I have a heart for cancer patients,” she says. As to her favorite part of the work, it’s getting to know the patients. “You’re exposed to a lot of different patients and a lot of different backgrounds,” she adds.
Prachi Amin
Age: 15
Why: “I decided to volunteer because I’’ve always enjoyed volunteering my whole life and I wanted to learn more about the hospital environment since I am looking into a career in health care. I also thought that volunteering would be a very productive way to spend my summer.”
Best Part: “The best part of volunteering was interacting with the patients. I loved talking with them and getting to help them. The patients were always so grateful to have us volunteers there to help them, and they were always happy to see us, which made the whole experience very rewarding.”
