The death of Veldboer comes unexpectedly and the foundation says it is very sad. “Our condolences go out to his wife Ineke Veldboer, his children, grandchildren and other family members. The planned wishes will, as far as possible, be carried out in the agreed manner in accordance with Kees’s wishes,” the foundation writes.
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Veldboer was the founder of the Ambulance Wish Foundation, a foundation that has been fulfilling the last wishes of terminal patients who depend on ambulance transport every day since 2007. Together with 270 medically trained volunteers, he committed himself to the foundation.
Veldboer founded the foundation after working as an ambulance driver for twenty years. The idea came to him when he was transporting a terminal patient, Mario, from one hospital to another and had an idea: why not take Mario one more time to his favorite place?
16,000 wishes
Since then, he and the other volunteers have fulfilled more than 16,000 wishes in recent years. The foundation became internationally known, in eleven countries. It started in Israel, where a volunteer picked it up, and now they are in Spain, Brazil and Ecuador, among others.
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Even before he had that foundation, he fulfilled the last wishes of patients. For two years, from his living room – with an ambulance in his garage that he received from his employer – he provided rides to carry out last wishes. In the beginning there were a few a month, but it soon became a few a week.
He didn’t really realize that he started all this from his living room, he said earlier against RTL News. “Only when people say it do I think: oh yes, I am proud.” He got a prize from the BBC in England. In 2016, he was named the most inspiring person.
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