An organization providing an important service to the homeless in the Comox Valley has changed.The Care-A-Van is now overseen by the new Comox Bay Care Society.The Care-A-Van has been serving the homeless since 2009 thanks to the efforts of Helen Boyd, a local nurse and mental health therapist.Boyd’s enthusiasm spread to Barry Willis of Sunwest RV when she suggested the creation of a mobile medical unit. After Willis found a suitable van, the Sunwest staff worked late nights and weekends on their own time modifying the van.No matter how well-equipped, the van would not have hit the street without Boyd recruiting health care professionals -- including nurses, doctors, dentists, social workers and optometrists – to staff the van.Doctors Without Frontiers heroically aid the injured and ill in foreign lands, but the health-care professionals who make the Care-A-Van service possible right in our backyard deserve praise, too.Regardless of which board of directors is responsible for the Care-A-Van’s operation, Boyd and the other health-care pros are still making it possible.Not only was Boyd instrumental in creating the Care-A-Van concept and willing the project off the ground, she ensures its ongoing operation with her continuing involvement.Her inspiration and perspiration are the stuff that Citizens of the Year are made of.Even so, the Care-A-Van would not have become a reality without Willis and the community-minded Sunwest staff, which space prevents us from naming. Ditto the doctors, nurses, dentists, social workers and optometrists who keep volunteering to help those in desperate need.Their mission — to improve access to health care and related services through relationship-building with people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness in the Comox Valley area.To learn more, visit www.comoxbaycare.org or e-mail comoxbay@live.ca.editor@comoxvalleyrecord.com