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Sunrise, Sunset: aging at the beach
As the American life span stretches out and old age is extended, South Bay seniors and their baby boomer children face a brand new set of challenges
by Robb Fulcher
The beach communities of Southern California may be among the most youth-conscious areas of a nation noted for worshipping the young. But a look along the Esplanade at sunset, or into those cozy bungalows just past the monolithic Strand homes, reveals a growing number of seniors.
"They're the hidden population," said Marilyn Rafkin, director of older adult services for the Beach Cities Health District.
Partially hidden the seniors may be, but they are not few. Advances in health and medicine have helped push the average American life span to 75 years. The fastest growing segment of our population is 85 and older, according to Carol Orlock, author of the book "The End of Aging." Some 36,000 Americans are 100 or older, and in the next 25 years that total is expected to reach 266,000.
Old age has become an extended portion of life, and that portion will continue to grow as scientists dig out more keys to longevity, from the down-to-earth reality of extreme caloric control to the science fiction-like promise of abundant spare body parts through stem-cell research.
But the day-to-day effects of extended old age are felt not in the laboratories and research centers, but in the homes and lives of the elderly and their baby boomer children.
Sunrise
"It's a new frontier," said Mike Ludwig, owner of Ein Stein's Restaurant and Brewery, who has had to educate himself in issues of housing and health care as his 91-year-old mother, Kathryn Roberts, enters her fourth week in the swank, new, hotel-style Sunrise Assisted Living on Pacific Coast Highway.
"My generation is the first generation to encounter this," Ludwig said. "Previously, people's parents lived into their 60s and 70s, and just died. Now all the work on longevity is helping them stay alive."
Ludwig's mom left her home of 45 years after Ludwig's father, Ted, died in November 1998.
"She had been married 55 years, so she was very dependent on my dad. Without him she just didn't know what to do," Ludwig said.
"It was a tough call to move her out of the house. She actually mentioned it herself, why did she need this big house when she was all alone?" Ludwig said. "But when we did it, it was still very traumatic."
At first the family hired $13-an-hour, in-home caretakers; then Roberts entered an area nursing home offering advanced medical care.
"But it was white walls and linoleum floors, and they would just feed them and put them in the hall. They would just sit there. She started going downhill rapidly," Ludwig said.
"It's an emotional, depressing thing to have to deal with a parent aging in the first place. To have to see her in that sterile, institutional environment, you come out feeling more depressed," he said.
Roberts was among a minority of seniors who, with her family, could afford to move to the new and innovative Sunrise, which Ludwig calls a "five-star hotel," built into a small hollow along PCH in north Hermosa.
The cost of residing in one of the 80 suites ranges from $2,200 to $4,700 a month, and added costs vary depending on the need for assistance with day-to-day matters such as bathing and dressing. Roberts' tab, with restaurant-quality meals included, is $3,500 a month.
Sunrise is the only facility of its kind in the area. A stroll through the building and grounds reveals attractive rooms and sunny common areas, a separate restaurant and bistro, outdoor balconies and a copious courtyard with a view of the Pacific.
Thirty-five seniors moved into Sunrise virtually upon its opening in late February, 11 of them taking up residence in the special 15-suite unit for people with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia.
That area is filled with vintage clothing and photos enjoyable to folks whose long-term memories remain sharp, while short-term memory dwindles. In a sitting room area, a docile, curly-haired dog is sleeping in the sun while a couple of older women chat with a staff member and an older man holds a doll in his arms.
"Doctor, would you mind taking a look at him?" the man asks a passerby. Assured that the baby is healthy and well, the man tells a couple of jokes and flirts with a young woman who is passing through.
Although Ludwig and his mom are clearly among the more fortunate, he cited the stress of caring for a parent and helping with major decisions.
"There are no guidelines for this. This is something you never consider growing up, or even into adulthood," Ludwig said. "You have to take care of your own emotions in this deal. You don't want to get yourself sick taking care of your parents."
Sunset
Of course, seniors without resources face larger problems with housing and health care.
"There's a great need for more affordable housing in this area," said Rafkin of the Beach Cities Health District. The district provides thousands of seniors with health-related services, care management, support groups, health screenings and educational programs.
"It's one thing to age when you have money, and it's another thing when you don't," said Kathy Hilberg, a care manager for the district.
The district's emphasis is to help seniors live in their homes as long as they can, and then to live as independently as possible if they must move to more managed housing.
"We see this hidden population," Rafkin said. "There are a lot of people who have aged in place in this area. When you see a two-on-a-lot [development] and there's this little house behind, and an older person bought it in 1945 for $3,000. They want to stay where they are."
Seventy-three percent of the health district's senior clients have yearly incomes of $15,000 or less, and another 19 percent have incomes between $15,000 and $25,000.
The district makes case-by-case assessments of what services it can provide, and what it can help the senior obtain through other sources. Important items include limited assistance from paid caregivers, push-button emergency response devices and help with personal care such as bathing.
A 'wonderful place'
Joan Lindberg, 63, a north Redondo Beach computer specialist, brought her 87-year-old mother, Dorothy Glans, from Arkansas after a physician said the older woman must live with family members or in a nursing home.
In Arkansas, Glans came to know the vagaries of age. One time she fell down and crawled on all fours, trying to get up. Confused and traumatized, she used her emergency response device to get help, although she has no recollection of that part of the episode.
At another point that fades in her memory, her health took a sudden decline to the point that her family could not make sense of her conversation.
Out in Redondo, Lindberg moved things around in her home and modified the bathroom for her mom, who uses a walker. Lindberg's sister came out from Illinois to help with the transition. But soon the sister had to return home, and Lindberg hired caregivers to come in when she was at work.
"It didn't work out," Lindberg said. "If she wasn't hungry they wouldn't make her eat, and if she didn't want to get up and walk, they would just say 'okay.'"
Now Glans lives in an Angel Care six-bed home on a quiet street in a roomy South Torrance neighborhood. She praises the attentive care she gets and her new friends, one of whom rooms with her.
"This is like family," she said, relaxing in the front living room. "It's good to be around people."
Never much of a reader before, Glans is working her way through a book on Grace Kelly, and has picked up her old hobby of crochet.
"I'm not too much on TV, just 'Jeopardy' and 'The Wheel,'" she said.
Her alertness and mobility are testament to the importance of quality care, mental stimulation and the presence of friends and family.
"I don't feel old," she said, her eyes bright a little wider with a reminder of her years. "I know I'm 87, and that is a lot of years, but I don't feel that way. I think you have to take it one day at a time."
Even with everything going so well, a mention of money turns wistful the bright moods of mother and daughter. Family members chip in to help cover the $2,000-a-month cost, buttressed by insurance and Social Security payments.
"The cost is just something else," Lindberg said in a subdued voice. "After about two more years, I'm not sure how we'll do this." ER