Driving Daisies: a ride, a waiting room and a friendly face
The call usually comes from an adult child who lives out of town: Mom needs to get to the doctor, doesn’t drive anymore, and won’t take an Uber. On the Eastern Shore, the answer increasingly has a name — Driving Daisies, the senior transportation and companion service Michelle Braly runs out of Fairhope, one appointment at a time.
Braly launched the service in September 2022, but the idea was born on a beach trip. A friend suggested she take seniors on day trips; Braly, who had spent years working with elderly clients, recognized her calling immediately. “I feel like this is my calling, my ministry,” she says.
The service seniors actually need
What Braly offers is more than a ride. She schedules appointments and stays with her clients through them — waiting during diagnostic testing, sitting through medical injections, holding a hand during same-day surgery — then drives them home and makes sure they’re settled. “Lots of seniors don’t have rides and need someone to stay with them and take them home,” she says, “especially if they have some kind of medical procedure or have their eyes dilated.”
The menu of services covers everything on her business card: doctor appointments, same-day surgery, shopping, restaurants, events, and errands. She has even taken clients’ pets to veterinary appointments. Rates are straightforward — $25 an hour, with at least 24 hours’ notice so she can check her schedule — and she works weekends. About 90 percent of her business has come through The Get It Girl referral network, supplemented by flyers at senior centers and ads on Facebook.
Why not just call a ride-share?
Because, Braly says, most of her clients won’t. “A lot of senior ladies are not comfortable taking Uber,” she says. “Many are widows and aren’t comfortable driving at night.” What they want is a person — someone who knows their name, waits with them, and takes them home afterward. She hopes to attract active senior women who want to get out to a play or dinner, and she is planning a first-of-the-month Sunday driving service that picks ladies up for church and brings them home again afterward.
From Haleyville to Fairhope
Braly’s path to the work ran through an art degree and two coasts. Her father was a corporate pilot for a mobile home manufacturer in Haleyville, Alabama; when Hurricane Frederic hit the Gulf Coast in 1979, he flew dealers to Mobile to help displaced families, was offered a job, and moved the family to Fairhope. Michelle attended Fairhope High School and graduated from Bayside Academy in 1986, then met her husband Jason at the University of North Alabama, where both earned art degrees.
Jason chased acting to Los Angeles — landing an understudy role in a Steve Martin play — and Michelle followed, working four years for an ophthalmologist. The couple moved on to Nashville, where she worked in Vanderbilt University’s ophthalmology department and Jason traded theater for teaching elementary art. In 2014 they brought their two children home to Fairhope.
Senior care had already become a theme. While working part-time for a physician’s practice, she spent three days a week caring for a local man whose wife had developed Alzheimer’s disease — two years of companionship that ended when the wife entered memory care. “I found out a lot about myself,” she says. “I like to serve senior people.” A five-and-a-half-year stint at a medical equipment company followed, talking seniors through their needs and the labyrinth of insurance questions. “Seniors need and want people to talk to.”
Driving Daisies put all of it together: the patience of a caregiver, the logistics of a scheduler, and the belief that an aging population deserves more than an app. The adult children who call on behalf of their parents have become her most loyal customers — and, as Braly will tell you, the seniors she drives have become something better than clients. They have become friends.