Hi, I am sachambers.

I am a Stall Catcher. My mother has Alzheimer’s.

I am the mother of two grown children, and I find that taking care of Mom has many similarities to taking care of young children. They need someone to keep them safe and healthy in ways that they cannot manage for themselves. At the same time, they need to feel that they are an important person. They need someone who really listens to what they have to say and treats them with respect.

I grew up in Ohio, and I received my Bachelor of Science degree at OSU. After graduation I worked at a large biotech company in Connecticut for 33 years. I took early retirement four years ago so that I could move back to Ohio and be my mother’s full-time caregiver.

Mom and I spend a lot of our time at home. I get my daily exercise on the treadmill listening to podcasts. A few years ago, Stall Catchers (SC) was mentioned in a story about Alzheimer’s research. I found it online, took the tutorial, and have been hooked ever since.

Catching was easy to learn and can be done in an easy to pick-up and put-down manner. I keep SC running on my laptop at the kitchen table. I can sit down and catch for five minutes or an hour, and no matter how many movies I get done in that time, I know that I have contributed to research for curing Alzheimer’s. My own work in the lab has made me comfortable looking at microscope images. For those with less experience, catching stalls is explained and demonstrated well in the tutorial. Now there is even a chat box, which is helpful if you need to ask any other catchers a question!

SC continues to evolve with a lot of input from us catchers. As it stands now, only the current top ten (by score) are listed on the playing screen. In my opinion, new catchers are probably not very inspired by watching those names move up or down during the day. I have heard that SC may be adding a way to watch the scores of the ten catchers nearest you in the scoring. I think that would motivate lots of catchers to keep playing a little longer before taking a break.

With SC being featured on Citizen Science Day, we have quite a few new players joining us. As you can see, curing Alzheimer’s is very personal to me and I am glad to see so many others care too. Thank you to all the other catchers out there working/playing on such a worthwhile project. Catch on!

See you in SC,

Sheryl (sachambers)

Thank you so much, Sheryl, for sharing your story with us 💜 we hope it will be an inspiration to many other caregivers and everyone who cares deeply about stomping out this disease!


Catch more of "the Humans of Stall Catchers" stories here on our blog.