Judith Jones Ambrosini is the oldest person I know with type 1 diabetes, and she’s probably had it longer than anyone I know. When I was beginning to make my mark in diabetes, she was already in the thick of it. She’s been a board member with the American Diabetes Association (ADA), a board member of DESA (Diabetes Exercise and Sports Association), a journalist who wrote for many diabetes magazines, a professional chef and caterer who taught nutrition, she volunteered at Children with Diabetes’ conferences for more than twenty years, and taught Tai Chi at TCOYD (Taking Control of Your Diabetes) conferences in San Diego. When I first met Judith, thirty odd years ago, she blared at me something I’ve never forgotten: “You’re using the poor man’s pump!,” while looking at my syringe trying to convert me. Alas, she never did, but I loved her passion and commitment to helping others. At 83, Judith tells it like it is, then and now, and shares a few wild stories in-between. 

She saw it coming closer on social media and the TV News, she heard the howling winds, but she couldn’t imagine that it could reach all the way to her house. So many previous fires had stayed in the foothills and not ventured into the neighborhoods of Altadena, CA. But as a T1D of 61 years, Dorothy Noe smelled, and then saw, the approaching danger. Over a period of hours on January 7 and 8, 2025, she and her husband had to take action. When she evacuated her house that dark, early morning, she never imagined that she’d never return.