It was about 12 years ago when Yvette Nicole Brown first noticed that the regular Sunday phone calls with her dad, Omar Qaiyim, had started to seem odd. He was “not quite there” anymore, recalls Brown, who immediately decided to move her dad from his home in Cleveland to live with her in Los Angeles. “It was the easiest decision I made,” adds the 53-year-old actress, who’s best known for her role as Shirley on the TV sitcom Community. “Because in my mind, he taught me so much. How can I not step up and be there for him in his moment of need? My dad comes first.”
Not long after that, Qaiyim, now 81, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia. In the years since…
