While Teresa Salinas attended high school, her father Lolo Salinas struggled with a rare heart condition and started to become ill with heart problems. After the birth of her first son, her father’s condition became worse and as she sat at his side in his last moments she struggled with feeling she could have done more. Now, more than 20 years later, Salinas still feels called to help those around her. She runs her own business, Waymakers Home Health, and spends her days caring for her patients and visiting with them.
Salinas went to school at Dublin High School until her junior year. When she left school early due to her father’s condition and got married, and she and her new husband moved to Comanche. Soon their first child (of four) was born. Salinas balanced her time between caring for her growing family and taking classes to become a certified nurses aide.
Her marriage did not work out, and in 2004, Salinas moved to DeLeon where she worked as a CNA at various local facilities, including Mulberry Manor in Stephenville.
In2020,Salinas’lifechanged for the better when she was baptized. And now attends Lingleville Baptist Church. Salinas had grown up Catholic, but felt drawn to have a true relationship with Christ. Finally, in 2020, she began her journey there.
“I was broken in a lot of areas and I just knew that there was more to life,” she said. “I had gone through a place of depression. After my divorce and my dad’s passing a couple years later, I needed to learn I was broken, and I needed healing. It wasn’t till I hit the wall, and came to the end of myself and the beginning with God, and it changed my whole life.”
After her baptism, “I just began on a journey with the Lord,” she said. “I just felt like he was calling me to do private care, because COVID had just hit. We needed to work, but it just wasn’t the same at the facility; you had less time to spend with patients and I just didn’t feel like they were receiving a lot of the care that they needed.”
So Salinas and her sister decided to start their business, Waymaker Private Care. “The Lord had put it on my heart,” she said. “It was something that I had always done that I felt I was good at — I took care of my father when he was sick.”
Now the business is flourishing. She and her sister have a team of home health nurses, and Salinas manages the payroll. When she has free time at work, she likes to spend it visiting with current and former patients.
Salinas loves these moments of interaction. “I just love getting to know them, getting to help them, keeping them comfortable in the moment, sharing the Lord with them; just meeting their needs to the best of my ability.”
In the future, Salinas and her sister plan to grow the business. “My sister is trying to move to Granbury, and we just made some other contacts that would help us and help the business thrive a little further and expand to the Metroplex,” she said.
When she’s not working, Salinas enjoys hosting Bible Study at her house and spending time with her family. “We love to get together and just hang out, cook out, whenever the weather’s good,” she said.
Salinas’ four children are grown now. Her youngest, Adan, is 17 and goes to high school in DeLeon. Her three older children, Alizé, Valerie, and Anthony, are all out of the house. Salinas has two young grandchildren Zamiah and Amari. Her mother, Yolanda Tovar, lives nearby and helps Salinas with her business.
Salinas’ advice to Dublin graduates comes from her own experiences with her religion. “Seek the Lord in everything,” she said. “Have him as a foundation because it’s very important — without the Lord we are nothing.”
Editor’s Note: This column chronicles what Dublin graduates have done since high school. If you have any suggestions for other grads, email publisher@dublincitizen. com.