Nicole “Nikki” Richey, certified family nurse practitioner at Eskenazi Health Center Pedigo, has always had a taste for adventure. “I love not knowing what’s around the corner,” she says.

Hearing stories from her father, a pharmacist at Sidney & Lois Eskenazi Hospital (then Wishard Hospital), made her crave the exciting atmosphere of emergency medicine. She began her career at Parkview Regional Medical Center’s emergency department in Fort Wayne before moving to Indianapolis, where she worked at Eskenazi Hospital for more than a decade.

“I definitely had a passion for [the] fast pace, roll with the punches, treat anything that comes through the door,” she says. That passion for excitement has not diminished, though with five kids, it can be tough to manage outside of work. Richey has found a solution: she practices aerial silks, even setting up a miniature set in her attic so that she has her own “neat little adventure” during breaks in her day.

It may be surprising that this lover of adrenaline would ever leave the emergency department for the routine of primary care — until you consider which primary care center she chose.

At Eskenazi Health Center Pedigo, many patients are unhoused and have no phones or internet, so “a lot of our patients, even though they’re scheduled, will not make it . . . . You have to be able to adjust and see patients when they walk in the door,” she says. The unpredictability Richey relished in emergency care is there for her every day.

After landing at Eskenazi Health Center Pedigo, Richey quickly connected with her coworkers. “It just ended up being a really good fit,” she says. “The team there is just so awesome.”

She recalls memorable encounters. Alicia Dinkeldein-Warren, an embedded emergency medical technician at the Wheeler Mission, discovered that a patient had lost his job and housing due to sudden vision loss. She and Richey collaborated to arrange his transportation and vision care appointments. The patient’s reaction when he saw Richey for the first time was, “‘Oh that’s what you look like,’” Richey recalls, then he “just gave me a big hug; it was just one of the most rewarding things,” she says. “There’s lots of stories like that,” she adds, “but that was a really, really cool one.”

Now Richey visits unhoused residents throughout Indianapolis in her spare time, caring for wounds, changing dressings and providing medicine checks. “You always hear housing is health care, which is true,” she says. “Going out on outreach has been one of the biggest things that’s opened my eyes . . . . The good, the bad, the ugly — you see it all.”

With homelessness, says Richey, “everybody has a story of how it happened and where they’re at with things, and they’re all very different.” Despite her sadness in witnessing the toll of mental health struggles, addiction and PTSD among the unhoused, she is struck by “the love and care within the community.”

Given their precarious lives, Richey must earn these patients’ trust, as when she urged a man to come to her center after she brought him food and water and had scheduled burn wound care appointments for him. He agreed, but told her, “I’m only coming in because I know you, and you care.”

The unhoused patients’ visits to Eskenazi Health Center Pedigo may be the only interaction they experience with others in a week, Richey explains. “People don’t sit down and really talk to people in the homeless population,” she says, recalling a patient who shared, “I just want to thank you for listening to me and making me feel like a human.”

Richey says her work is inspired by her team and by the memory of former Eskenazi Health nurse Betty Pedigo, the “driving force” in homeless care for whom the center is named.

At Eskenazi Health Center Pedigo, patients can “warm themselves in the bitter cold winter months” and “cool themselves in the heat of summer,” Richey explains. “Whenever possible,” she says, “we soak patients’ feet. We clip their toenails. We feed them. We offer a clean, dry change of clothing. Most importantly, we provide words of encouragement and emotional support . . . . ”

Richey was excited to join a mobile unit Eskenazi Health Center Pedigo began piloting this fall to assist the unhoused population, helping meet “our most vulnerable patients where they are.” She describes the first experiences with this unit as “beautiful.”