Book of Dreams: Sacramento senior center has everything but a new kitchen sink
Tucked in a quiet neighborhood near Northgate Boulevard and West El Camino Avenue, Stanford Settlement Senior Center is more than a place to hang out for aging boomers and others who grew up during the Depression.
“We’re familia,” said Sylvia Toledo, 79, who moves easily between English and Spanish. A man who gathered with her one recent day at one of the center’s folding tables described the staff as “angels.”
From tiny Mini Medina, who needs a little assistance to open the door to the center, to feisty World War II vet Joe Ortiz, the visitors have found a second home, one that welcomes them from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday through Friday.
But the popular spot has some needs.
“You want to see our ridiculous sinks?” asked the center’s executive director, Julie Rhoten, as she walked into the kitchen that is used to plate lunches supplied to the center every weekday by Meals on Wheels.
The two steel sinks look like they were designed for washing hands. They are set in an L configuration, with a single faucet that swivels to both of them. Replacing them with a new, larger stainless steel sink is one of the requests the center is making this year to readers of The Sacramento Bee’s Book of Dreams project.
In addition to the weekday lunches for seniors, the crowded kitchen is used by community groups making the occasional hot breakfast and there’s always a continental breakfast available when the seniors arrive.
Rhoten would like the bigger sink to make it easier for those who serve the seniors and for cleanup.
Tidying up the kitchen, 28-year-old activity assistant Paige Aster, who moved here a month ago from Antioch in the Bay Area, said she loves working with the seniors.
“They have good stories, good wisdom,” she said. “They are very blunt. They tell it like it is, whether you want to hear it or not. I wouldn’t work anywhere else.”
Stanford Settlement offers a variety of programs and services for residents of the Gardenland/Northgate, North Sacramento and Natomas communities. Besides the senior center, the program offers after-school groups and a summer camp for children, and a teen center.
The buildings get a lot of use. They are cleaned daily, but after a couple of decades of being trod over by hundreds of shoes, the floors could use a deep clean. Getting that done is the second and more costly part of the group’s Book of Dreams request.
Darlene Baxter, Ruth Standley and Ida Stanford are stalwarts at the senior center.
“We’re here almost every day,” said Baxter, 72.
The three women say they visit mostly for the camaraderie, the nice staff, the variety of things to do. “It’s just a friendly place to come,” said Standley, who is 78. “And they take us to bingo, to medical appointments and to Wally World – you know, Walmart.”
So how did Stanford Settlement get its unusual name?
Sacramentans tend to think of settlement as something John Sutter did in the mid-1880s. But settlement here harkens back to a reformist social movement that began also in the 1800s and had the goal of bringing the rich and the poor of society together in both physical proximity and social connection.
Unlike agencies that deal with specific problems such as mental health centers, Stanford Settlement deals with a specific neighborhood. It’s in the business of helping people learn how to live together and to secure good living conditions, from the young to the aging.
With two vans and a couple of electric cars, it provides transportation to the center and takes those who no longer drive to medical appointments.
It also provides case management for families, who are often overwhelmed with work, child and caretaking duties.
Besides meals, the center offers classes in nutrition and fitness, and seniors are free to just hang out at the tables and play dominos or Uno.
But on a recent Friday, for karaoke hour, everyone was gathered around the big screen TV that connects to a website for the instrumentals and displays lyrics that are large enough for everyone in the room to read. Staff members hand out maracas, tambourines and cymbals to involve those who don’t want to sing, and a microphone for those who do.
No “Roll Out the Barrel” for these folks; the first couple of choices are “Sitting on the “Dock of the Bay” and “Amish Paradise.” Weird Al Yankovic has nothing on a 75-year-old green-hair-and-beard rock ‘n’ roller.
“This place is like a magnet,” said Ortiz, who celebrated his 101st birthday at the center earlier in November, “attracting good people.”
Book of Dreams
The request: Stanford Settlement is asking for a stainless steel heavy-duty sink, a reconfiguration of the kitchen space to accommodate it and a professional deep clean for the floors of the senior, teen and children’s centers.
The cost: $7,500.
