Family Connections: Ashlee & Ashley

At Valley Health, we love to highlight family members who work together and who share their passion for patient care. But family can mean a lot of things, and sometimes it means your best friend. We talk with Ashlee R., office coordinator at Home Health, and Ashley A., charge nurse in the Medical Innovations Unit (MIU), about what they enjoy about working together at Valley Health.

Tell me how you two first met and what drew you together?

Ashlee: We met at Musselman High School in Inwood, WV. Ashley was in eighth grade and I was in ninth grade. We both were on our color guard team for the indoor season. What drew me to Ashley was our similar likes. We were both kind of emo/punk rock kids and obviously shopped at Hot Topic. She was "slightly" quieter than I was, but you wouldn’t know that now. I wouldn’t choose anyone else as my best friend. We know everything about each other; there are no secrets. There’s no “I wonder if…,” only an “I know.” We’ve been together through school, marriage, kids, college, and now “middle age." The joke is that our relationship with each other is longer than with our husbands, so we are practically common law married.

Ashley: I was in eighth grade and joined the Indoor color guard and met Ashlee. I thought she was really loud, and now 23.5 years later, we’ve been best friends more than half our lives. We spend more time on trips with each other than our husbands.

Why did you choose Valley Health?

Ashlee: I chose Valley Health because Ashley had already worked for Home Health for a few years and would tell me anytime there was an entry level position open to apply for it since I had no medical experience. After THREE interviews (here’s to you Teresa), I finally got the job on the third try! I started in the Intake department. I was promoted in October 2025 to office coordinator. I truly believe everything happens for a reason, and completely switching careers at 30 threw my life on a completely different path.

Ashley: I chose to work for Valley Health at the age of 19 because my mom worked for Valley Health for several years and loved the organization and people she worked with. 

What do you like about working at Valley Health?

Ashlee: My favorite part of working for Valley Health is the work/life balance. My leadership is very accommodating of being the “working mom” and allowing me to be present in all the things my kids do. To have supervisors that understand our roles as not only mothers, but also as women means a lot.

Ashley: I love the staff I work with. I love MIU and the way we do rounds with the physicians, so we all know what is going on with our patients and we hear the same information the patients hear. I love being a charge nurse and being a resource for the staff on my unit as well as the patients and their family members.

What do you like about working with your best friend?

Ashlee: Since Ashley worked for Home Health previously, she knows a lot of my coworkers, and I know some of her coworkers on her unit as well. Plus, we talk about each other so much that our coworkers practically know us already. I will pop onto the unit sometimes, just to prove that I’m real, since I don’t work on campus. We are kind of like celebrities because anytime we go somewhere, once people realize we are both named Ashlee/y, they get excited! Our coworkers all know we usually have something planned, whether it be a cruise, a concert, comedy show, or just going to Union Jack restaurant on the walking mall for brunch.

Ashley: I loved when we worked at Home Health together, and during Covid we were sent to work from home and shared a basement while I was finishing nursing school. Now Ashlee will randomly show up on MIU when she is at the hospital, and I get to show her to everyone who hears about her and our adventures but doesn’t get to see her in “real life.”