This site exists because of one person.
Her name is Annie. She is a sister, a daughter, the kind of person who takes care of everyone around her and never asks for anything back. She died at 45, full of life and looking ahead. Caretaking for our sick Dad and helping our Mom is not what caused her death, but her last 5 years could have been better, and maybe she would have recognized her symptoms before it was too late.
What happened
In 2019, Annie left her career as a nature documentary filmmaker and her life exploring the world to move home during COVID and eventually help care for our father. She didn't have to. She chose to. Our parents are hugely supportive and always encouraged Annie and me to follow our dreams, but because of her deep love for them, leaving felt impossible once she was there. That profound sense of responsibility kept Annie in Spokane longer than she had planned.
Before all that, Annie made films. Her award-winning documentary A Wolf's Place follows the return of gray wolves to the Northern Rocky Mountains and the story of Wolf 10, the first wild wolf released into Yellowstone in more than 70 years. It will tell you more about who she was than anything written here can.
She had no income for most of that time, no real support, and her health, physical and mental, deteriorated under the isolation and stress. The most heartbreaking part is that she was entitled to help, but the system never told her. Neither did the doctors, the social workers, or anyone else she encountered along the way. In 2025, Annie died of a sudden pulmonary embolism. She was 45 years old.
Tom, Annie's brother, and why TrustAnnie.com exists
Tom is Annie's younger brother. He was working in venture capital in Los Angeles when she died. He flew home the next day to settle her estate, relocated to Spokane two weeks later to become a part-time caretaker, and try to understand what had just happened to his sister.
What he found was unsettling. The help Annie desperately needed had existed the entire time, it just never reached her. He discovered she had been eligible for thousands of dollars in Medicaid caregiver compensation and paid family leave protections she never used. There were peer support groups right in her city and therapists specializing in caregiver burnout she was never referred to.
Tom built TrustAnnie.com, and this free knowledge base, so the next Annie wouldn't go through that. Not because technology fixes everything. It doesn't. But because knowing what you're entitled to, and that you're not alone, can change a life. It would have changed hers, maybe even saved hers.
What TrustAnnie.com believes
- The caregiver matters too. Most of caregiving is built around the patient. We're built around the person doing the caring. The hard reality is, your life will go on, and remaining healthy, both physically and mentally, should be your priority.
- Information should not be a privilege. Knowing your rights, what benefits exist, and where to find help shouldn't depend on who you happen to know. Everything fundamental here is free, and the core caregiving information will stay that way.
- You are not alone. There are 53 million family caregivers in the United States right now. The aloneness is a feature of the system, not a fact of life.
- You don't have to be a hero. Resting is not abandoning the person you love. Asking for help is not weakness. Paying yourself for the work you're already doing is not greedy. None of this makes you a worse caregiver. It makes you one who can keep going.
If you take one thing from this site, let it be this: someone you don't know, in a town you've never heard of, knows exactly what you're going through. You are not the first person, nor the millionth, to feel this way. And the help that should have reached Annie can still reach you.