FOR A GOOD CAUSE:

**CORRECTION: The deck should have said, “After climbing the corporate ladder, Shannon Ingram decided there were people who needed her attention more: her ailing parents.”**

The phone at Marianne and Jack Garner’s Palm Desert condo had been disconnected, and the homeowners’ association was threatening to foreclose because dues hadn’t been paid.

Shannon Ingram, their daughter, found a box of paid, un-mailed bills in the back of her mother’s closet.

Marianne Garner said she had no idea what four months’ worth of payments were doing in a box in her closet. Within a year, Ingram would leave her six-figure corporate job to care for her ailing parents full time, a life-changing experience she shares in her book, “The Heart Way — A Journey From Corporate to Care.”

Ingram, who spent 25 years climbing the corporate ladder, was perched on the top rung as regional vice president of marketing for a corporate travel management company when she “decided to care more about [her parents] than about my job with all the perks.”

She and her husband were living in Colorado. They moved back to Newport Beach in 2003. In her role as caregiver, Ingram said she felt good about what she was doing.

“I thought I was making a difference, and it was more fulfilling than finding an executive a first-class seat on an airplane.”

Her mother suffers from dementia, caused by a series of mini strokes she has had during the past 10 years, and her stepfather Jack, “sharp as a tack,” she said, has lost most of his vision due to macular degeneration. He also has prostate cancer, diabetes and congestive heart failure.

Before Ingram began taking care of them, her parents would stay in the apartment all day, going through old birthday cards and looking at pictures, she said.

That changed once she was close by.

“They were so thrilled to have someone there,” she said, and she took them out, going places and doing things for fun.

Care giving was a choice Ingram made, but one of the things she wants people to know is that it isn’t an easy choice, or necessarily the right choice, for everyone.

There are many different ways to care for an elderly parent, she said, and letting someone else handle the day-to-day tasks may be more realistic for some.

Just being an advocate for the care of elderly parents by making sure the people taking care of them are qualified and treating them well, and continuing to be a presence in their lives can be enough.

When her step-dad had a stroke in 2005, Ingram realized they needed more care than she could provide, and she moved them to an assisted-living facility in Irvine.

Ingram said her parents have made a lot of friends, her step-dad is feeling better, and they seem happy most of the time. She visits her parents at least every other day and stays focused on being grateful. If her mom isn’t happy, or starts complaining, Ingram said, she’ll ask her what she’s grateful for, and that turns everything around immediately.

“Gratitude is the best form of distraction.”

SUE THOENSEN may be reached at (714) 966-4627 or at sue.thoensen@latimes.com.