[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Home is where we’d prefer to be when we don’t want to be anywhere else. But, sometimes, home is where we must be when we can’t be anywhere else. Carolyn is the caregiver for her 39-year-old daughter, who is afflicted with cerebral palsy and other illnesses. They’ve lived in their home for 20 years. […]
Jonas Vikta’s table
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Where two long corridors meet in a second-floor corner at Casitas de Villa Corona, Jonas Vikta’s table beckons in the morning light. As does Miss Eddie. “Come on, sit down,” she says to a couple, Simon and Cecelia, as they approach down one of the vinyl-floored corridors. They join her, and in minutes, a […]
Home is where you dance, sew, and create community
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Angelina Zavala is home, sitting in the lobby of Casitas de Villa Corona. It’s a Thursday, but Angelina is already looking forward to Sunday afternoon because every Sunday afternoon she goes dancing at The Royal Palace, two knee replacements be darned. “I like dancing,” the 81-year-old says. “I like the music, especially Tejano.” Angelina rises […]
Hope to Dream: a safe place to sleep
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Getting a bed for her baby. That’s what Dawn Edwards wanted for her 3-year-old granddaughter Ka’Mya. Ka’Mya didn’t have a bed of her own; she slept with her mother or grandmother on a make-shift pallet on the floor, one she’d share with her four cousins when they spent the night. Dawn shares an Artisan at […]
Merced Resident Empowered Through Financial Literacy
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]To be young, with a good job and a salary that you have the potential to parlay into better jobs and higher salaries is a wonderful feeling of optimism and empowerment. To be young and to understand how to budget your money for emergencies and growth is an even more secure feeling. At the age […]
Resident Services Coordinator is lifeline for Alhambra Resident
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] It only takes an instant to change a life completely. Few people know this better than Richard Cortez, who lives at the Alhambra Senior Apartments. Richard uses a wheelchair to get around, but that wasn’t always the case. He worked in the technical end of the entertainment business from the time he was a […]
Rosa at Casitas de Villa Corona
Rosa Villarreal does more than talk with her hands. They dance as she speaks—gracefully, rhythmically and eloquently. The Casitas de Villa Corona resident’s eyes twinkle when she talks of her happy memories and they fill with tears when she recounts the tough times. She is impeccably dressed, down to the polish on her nails. Her […]
Renewal and Healing Through Art
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] As a child, Linda Wallace loved to draw, capturing the places and things she saw. Through her teen years and college, and even while working as a pediatric nurse’s aide and starting a family, Wallace kept sketching and painting the world around her. Right into her senior years. But she slowed down by 2008, […]
Repairing Home, Restoring Dignity
In a home on San Antonio’s East Side neighborhood of Denver Heights, Juana Rosa Mercado cooked meager meals on a hot plate and used a small crockpot to heat water for her bath. There was no running water, no heat and no working stove. Like so many older adults in San Antonio, Mrs. Mercado was […]
Making Connections
Old farm roads had long ago given way to interstate highways and the nearby historic missions would soon capture international acclaim. Yet the residents of this urban South Side neighborhood remained dependent on plumbing systems no household in one of the nation’s largest cities had seen for years — outhouses, leaking septic tanks and cesspools. […]
