Seventy-eight-year-old Angelita Perez is a working senior who truly cares about the men and women of her generation as they walk through the sunset of their lives.
Angelita Perez, 78, is photographed in Hillcrest Care, the small assisted-living facility she owns in El Dorado, Calif., on July 14, 2022. Perez has a passion for serving aging Baby Boomers, an endeavor that is increasingly plagued by serious issues in the U.S. health-care system.
What has endeared her to her patients and their families is the commitment and familial warmth that comes into play in every aspect of caregiving for residents who are mostly in their late 80s and 90s. An important rule of the house is to never engage in a verbal joust with the patients, some of whom are experiencing dementia or sheer memory regression. Perez underscores the importance of keeping the mood on the sunny side, even to the point of flattery. She finds the trick to dealing with patients' mental and emotional swings and quirks essential to enhancing their overall well-being.
Eventually, she felt like she could offer more for others than making their beds and doing their laundry, so she negotiated with her supervisor to have time to take a course to become a Certified Nursing Aide. Her supervisor responded with a firm work-or-study option. A future supervisor, fortunately, was more sympathetic to her plan for a career change.
Currently, only 3% of seniors occupy some 78,000 units between the assisted living facilities and nursing homes in the U.S. An estimated one million units will be needed by 2040. California, where Perez is located, is home to some 5,600 units but is expected to need 127,000 in the next 20 years.
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