Judy Martin is racking up a lot of frequent-flyer miles. Not by taking vacations to exotic locales, either. Instead, this 63-year-old grandmother is flying every six weeks from her Austin, Texas, home to Camarillo, California, to assist her ailing 88-year-old father.

These round trips began early last year when Judy became concerned that her father, Jack Miller, seemed increasingly disorganized and confused. Upon retiring years earlier from several real estate businesses, he’d stored his papers in a room at home he’d set up as an office. But over time the room fell into a state of disarray and he wouldn’t allow anyone in there. Judy’s stepmother, Barbara, became panicked by the worsening situation, but as a frail 86-year-old, she was unable to do much.

In an effort to help her dad get his finances in order, Judy asked him to list his assets. “When all he could mention were the house and his checking account, alarm bells went off in my head,” she says. A gerontologist confirmed a diagnosis of dementia.

Judy’s brother Steve, who’s 53, lives with their father and stepmother. He does the day-to-day chores—shopping, cooking, driving and so on—but is unable to cope with financial or legal matters. (Another brother, Eric, lives in San Francisco and meets with them when he can.) By February 2007, it became imperative that something be done. Judy and Steve told their father they wanted to work on his office. He said, “No! If you go in there, you’ll never come back again.” Realizing his need to feel independent, Judy told him, “Come in with us. Let’s do this together.”

Judy was unprepared for the chaos that greeted their eyes: papers stacked all over the room and shoved into countless grocery bags. “There was no floor space left. Steve and I were afraid Dad would fall.” It was all the more shocking, she recalls, “because he’d always been totally neat and organized.”

In May, Judy came back, this time with her son John. “I told John we are just going to live in Dad’s office until we conquer this,” Judy says. “We spent three solid days going through papers and sorting things out. For years, my father had saved every piece of paper that came his way.” She and John bought file folders and storage boxes, and Judy announced she would come every six weeks “to plow through this stuff.”

It was a difficult time for her to take on anything more. She and her husband, Tom, were in the process of moving to Austin from Connecticut to be near John, daughter-in-law Bonnie, five-year-old grandson Jack and their new granddaughter, Alexandra. Plus, Judy was setting up an interior-design business, specializing in children’s rooms.

Despite her overloaded schedule, Judy began flying back and forth, trying to work her way through the “complete shambles” of her father’s accounting. “Thank God, Dad was good about making notes about payments and conversations. But I’d see notes about five different companies, and finally find out they’d changed names many times and there was only one company,” Judy recalls. “It took me a long time to sort out this puzzle.”

John told her he couldn’t believe all the credit cards his grandfather had. Apparently, every time Jack had gotten a “once in a lifetime” offer, he’d agree to it. “There were monthly charges for credit-card fraud insurance and annual fees for credit cards he never used,” Judy says. She told John to ask his grandfather about these in a “positive” way, and then suggest he consolidate his cards.

There also were accidental death and dismemberment insurance policies—17 of them! “I cancelled fifteen,” she says. “He’d also been paying for an alarm system for years, but Dad said all he wanted was [a] fire [alarm].” Judy limited the policy to fire “and two-thirds of the bill disappeared. When I think of all that money going down the drain, I could freak out,” she admits. “My husband says there’s nothing we can do about it, so just forget it.”

A financial planner who specializes in seniors meets with Judy and provides her a written update each time she comes to visit her dad. “But the bank accounts were woefully out of kilter,” explains Judy. “We discovered that Dad hadn’t written in the monthly income from Social Security and his pension, which were done electronically.” Since her parents didn’t understand electronic fund transfers, “it was like out of sight, out of mind.” Now Judy reconciles the bank statements.

The financial planner also gives Judy “homework assignments.” “For instance,” Judy notes, “if something’s not in the right name, can I get the information?” This necessitates checking with numerous corporations. “I hate doing paperwork,” she says. “It’s mentally hard to stop what I’m doing in my life and take time to focus on this. I try to get the detective work done as soon as I get home, because otherwise it weighs on my mind and keeps me awake at night.”

Although contacting corporations is “new territory” for her, Judy finds that email makes it easier. Not for her father, though. “I showed Dad how to use the computer, but he couldn’t handle it. Companies tell you to send the information by email, but he can’t. Our society isn’t geared to people who aren’t computer literate.”

Fortunately, the life insurance and long-term care policies were in place. As the oldest child, Judy already had been assigned power of attorney, but she’s had the agreement rewritten so that her father and stepmother can also act in this capacity for each other. “We have equal—not joint—power, so we can act independently of each other. It’s important for them to feel they maintain a level of control.”

Despite the interruptions in her life, Judy believes long-distance caregiving is easier than living with the person “because then it’s constant.” For example, she says, “I can answer the same question from Dad seventeen times because I limit my visits to a few days. It’s harder for Steve, because he’s there all the time.” Yet, Judy notes, it’s important to carve out time just to enjoy her parents every time she visits, as well as “doing what needs to be done.”

It’s also imperative, she says, to realize you can’t tell how much a person with dementia may actually be absorbing. “The family will be having a conversation and Dad isn’t contributing, so you think he isn’t listening. But, all of a sudden, he says something.” One night the family pulled out some of the photo albums he’d kept from his youth. “We were flabbergasted when Dad showed us a picture of his first date, remembering her name and the make of car he’d driven that day! It’s amazing what details he remembers.”

She does see her father “slipping,” though. “Dementia is so insidious and gradual.” He can’t do the crossword puzzles he used to enjoy, so she offers to do them with him. He takes a daily Aricept® pill for the dementia, and wears a transdermal patch to help with bladder control, so he’s tired much of the time. “He used to be an avid golfer, but he no longer has the energy or interest to go for walks.” But he still has an “amazing mathematical mind,” she says proudly. He calculates sums faster than anyone else “and he still does the checkbook.”

Judy put a framed picture of her newest grandchild on his desk, but he kept asking who this was. “Then he put her name on a post-it and pasted it on the back of the frame. I thought, what a wonderful idea—we should put names on all the pictures.”

Her help has taken a big strain off her stepmother. “She was terribly worried about the future and not being able to do anything about it,” Judy says. “At this point, she and Dad will do anything I ask, but that’s scary, too. I put a piece of paper in front of them and they sign it. What staggers me is that they have assets they don’t even know they have.”

These days, Steve picks up the mail, discards what’s obviously junk, and gives the rest to his dad, who puts it on the desk for Judy to go through when she arrives. Everything gets carefully filed in new cabinets. The result, Judy says proudly, is a “model” office.

The experience also has taught her to make sure her own affairs are organized and up to date for her children, John and her older son, Kip, who lives with his family in San Francisco. “I told my sons, ‘Everything you need to know is in the bottom drawer!’”