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Finding Time to Push for Change

Volunteer Tye Hausheer a ‘ball of energy’

Katherine Shaver,

AARP

Published June 29, 2026

Thayra 'Tye' Hausheer, an AARP Florida volunteer, and her colleagues hand out promotional materials at the Alliance for Aging Conference in Miami in May 2026.

Jayme Kaye Gershen

On a recent Tuesday around 10 p.m., Thayra “Tye” Hausheer finished watching a British murder mystery with her husband and reached for her cellphone to tap out a flurry of emails. She would be at it until midnight, scheduling messages to hit inboxes at 8 a.m. the next day.

Hausheer had recently learned about an upcoming event in Tampa for women military veterans. As an Air Force veteran, she wanted to ensure that AARP volunteers from South Florida would be there to show support and share helpful resources.

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Hausheer, 64, lives in Miami and recruits, trains and manages about 100 active volunteers throughout Miami-Dade, Broward and Monroe counties. She does it all as a volunteer herself, spending about 20 hours a week to increase AARP’s visibility by reaching out to Floridians age 50 and older.

She wants more of them to know how AARP assists both veterans and caregivers — and how it helps people navigate Social Security and Medicare. She extends that reach by coordinating AARP activities with a half-dozen other organizations she volunteers with, including the Alliance for Aging, the Latino Center on Aging, WoVeN (Women Veterans Network), the Women Veterans’ Advisory Council for the Florida Department of Veterans’ Affairs and a veterans salute program through VITAS Healthcare.

How does she do it?

“Just picture an octopus,” Hausheer says with a laugh.

Yessenia Perez, an associate state director of outreach and engagement for AARP in South Florida, says she knows how: “She’s a ball of energy.”

MAKING CONNECTIONS

Hausheer, a member of the AARP Florida Executive Council, started volunteering with AARP in 2015.

As a retired supplies and logistics specialist for the Air Force, she wanted women veterans to get the same recognition as men. Having faced the challenges of helping to care for her mother in Panama from afar, she wanted caregivers to understand the importance of finding support. And after a 22-year career with the Social Security Administration, she wanted to help people access their benefits.

“If [we] want to change something,” Hausheer says, “I think we need to change it from the inside—not from the outside complaining.”

Perez, who started working for AARP in September, says she leans on Hausheer’s enthusiasm and experience, as well as her community connections. She says Hausheer helps her meet a goal of AARP participating in about 90 South Florida events annually because she’s involved in other organizations that AARP can partner with.

This year, Perez says, Hausheer invited her to a breakfast with Hialeah Mayor Bryan Calvo shortly after he took office in January. There, Perez says, she met a city official with whom she discussed Hialeah’s efforts to remain an AARP-designated age-friendly community, as well as ways AARP could offer programs in local senior centers.

“She opens doors for me,” Perez says of Hausheer.

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In March, Perez needed someone to speak about fraud awareness at a retirement community in Key Largo, where AARP has been less active. When no one stepped up, Hausheer did — and convinced two other volunteers to join her for what would be a more than three-hour round trip.

“She cares about the 50-and-older community,” Perez says. “She cares about AARP’s mission. She understands it. She breathes it.”

A FAMILY AFFAIR

Being a veteran is a family affair. Hausheer joined the Air Force in 1985, four years after arriving in the United States from Panama at age 19, and she served until 1989. She met her husband, Jeff, at Mountain Home Air Force Base near Boise, Idaho. Their son is also retired from the Air Force, and their daughter serves in the Air Force Reserve at Homestead Air Reserve Base in South Florida.

“When people think of veterans, they think of men,” Hausheer says. “I am there to show this is what a veteran looks like.”

Hausheer speaks quickly and laughs easily. When recruiting volunteers for AARP, she says, she keeps an eye out for energetic people with “a nice aura.” While on a cruise to Iceland, she met a couple on the dance floor who mentioned they were about to move to Orlando. Hausheer convinced them to get involved with AARP once they arrived.

As South Florida’s AARP volunteers have joked with her: “You cannot say ‘no’ to Tye.”

Any challenges to being so involved? Hausheer pauses and then says it is difficult to find one.

“Oh!” she finally says with a laugh “It’s time. Enough time. That’s the challenge.”

Want to get involved? AARP offers a range of volunteering opportunities. Go to aarp.org/volunteer to learn more.

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Katherine Shaver is a Washington, D.C.–area freelance writer for AARP who has covered state issues affecting people age 50 and older — including advocacy, fraud prevention, and public policy. She draws on more than 30 years of journalism experience, including a long career at The Washington Post.

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