Home Instead Senior Care helps seniors feel great from the outside in

By Kaye Ross, Town Crier Staff Writer

joe hu/town crier Eric Tran works his styling magic on Alice Schlim’s hair at Lily salon in Cupertino.

Just meeting Alice Schlim, you can tell that she has never needed a makeover in her life. A handsome, upright woman of 76, Schlim retains the smooth, pale skin of youth. Her thick, white hair illuminates her pretty features, making her eyes sparkle. She seldom wears makeup and doesn’t need to.

Even so, she was too excited to sleep the night before Home Instead Senior Care took her to her favorite salon, Lily in Cupertino, to have her hair done as part of one of the company’s senior makeovers. Lovely in a light lavender pants ensemble, Schlim emerged from the salon ready for one of her trademark “cocktail parties.”

Schlim, her caregiver Sharon Navone noted, prefers margaritas. At the Chateau Cupertino Retirement Residence, Schlim said, “We have a party for any occasion - going away, going to the doctor, getting your car washed.”

Schlim has relied on Navone during the past year since a knee operation forced her to stop driving. That’s the hardest transition for older people to make - particularly a senior like Schlim who was a jogger and tennis player most of her life.

“One of our main goals is for people to get the help they need so they can keep up their lifestyles,” said Navone.

Navone works for Home Instead, begun in 1994 by Paul and Lori Hogan in Omaha, Neb., to help seniors like Schlim who don’t need the 24/7 attention of skilled care but could use some nonmedical assistance to keep doing what they’ve been doing most of their lives.

Though Schlim lives in a retirement home, the Home Instead program aims to keep seniors in their own homes for as long as possible by helping with the mobility-oriented details of life that can become more onerous as we age.

Home Instead screens and trains their caregivers, who are also bonded and insured. Navone says the training never really stops, because as new clients come in, a caregiver’s lexicon of knowledge must expand to meet each new client’s particular needs. Knowing how to patiently draw out a person with Alzheimer’s disease, or how to be especially sensitive to not disturbing a client’s living space are skills that must be taught, according to Navone.

Home Instead is international, with franchises serving small areas to get seniors the friendly help a companion-on-call can provide.

The franchise that Schlim uses is based in Mountain View and covers territory from Cupertino to Belmont. A half-dozen staffers connect seniors with caregivers and offer a wide range of programs in addition to the driving, light housekeeping, cooking and errand assistance the caregivers provide.

The senior makeovers are one such program. The parent company has worked with actress and skin-care expert Victoria Principal to develop guidelines to help seniors look as good on the outside as they feel on the inside. The Mountain View franchise is planning a makeover workshop at an area senior center in August.

Similarly, Rebecca Kolls of television’s “Rebecca’s Garden” advises on cultivating gardens and Rachael Ray of the Food Network helps seniors cook better and more healthful food.

Navone jokes that Schlim gets no help from her on cooking, and, in fact, has taught her a thing or two. Schlim knows all the good restaurants in the area, and she and Navone have tried quite a few together.

“I do like to eat,” Schlim said as she savored a plate of sweet and sour pork.

Schlim is a terrific cook today, but she had to learn it at the school of hard knocks. At home growing up, there was a maid who took care of such chores. Schlim’s father owned Lowe and Zwierlein Department Store at Third and B in San Mateo - “everything from pins to furniture,” Schlim said - and the family was more privileged than others at that time.

The department store was near the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks at Third and B streets in San Mateo, so its advertising slogan was: “L & Z on the SP at Third and B.”

Schlim graduated from the all-girl Convent of the Sacred Heart in Menlo Park. After earning a degree in early childhood education from Dominican College, Schlim taught first-graders for two years.

“No one knew anything then,” she said, recalling the time when there were no kindergartens or preschools to teach children how to behave with others. It was a grind but not without its rewards.

“I received thousands of earrings,” Schlim said with a wry smile. “I didn’t wear earrings, but I got earrings from the children for every holiday.”

Schlim met her husband, Charlie, on a blind date arranged by a relative at a ballroom in San Francisco. She loved dancing. “After we were married,” she said, echoing the sighs of legions of women over the years, “the dancing went out the door.”

She and Charlie soon moved to Guam, where he ran the post exchange for two years during the Korean War. Part of the young wife’s learning process was starching Charlie’s shirts. In those days, getting the right amount of starch was an art. A lot of times, Charlie would put on his freshly starched and laundered uniform and “he couldn’t sit down,” Schlim said, laughing.

The couple’s first child, Carol, now 51, was born in Guam. The couple had two more children after they moved back to California - Walt, now 49, and Kate, 47.

The family lived in Los Gatos for a while, and both Charlie and Alice took up jogging at the high school track. They took two cars because they never finished at the same time - Charlie did 10 miles and Alice did 4.

With Charlie apparently the picture of health, it was a crushing blow when he was diagnosed at age 52 with leukemia. After Charlie died, Schlim didn’t stay long in their big home. She moved into the chateau the year it opened.

Now she is one of the chateau’s youngest residents, yet has been a widow for 23 years.

Until her knee operation, Schlim was very active, volunteering at Filoli in Woodside and playing tennis once a week. She has traveled all over the world by herself with groups, seeing Africa, South Africa, Egypt, India and China. She said her most recent trip to Spain will be her last - for the first time, she had trouble keeping up because of her knee.

But you won’t hear any complaining about aches and pains from Schlim. There is much life to be lived, and she plans to enjoy it. When a visitor observes that she looks too pretty to stay at home the rest of the day, Schlim says: “This calls for a cocktail party.”