Interview with Theron Ahlman, Care Patrol

I then personally will schedule the tours, I’ll even pick up whoever wants to go on the tour, whether it’s the son, daughter, maybe the senior themselves. I go with them, it’s still 100% up to the community to give the tour, walk them through it, but I am there to go through that process and ask different questions for them that they might not be thinking of. To me, it’s obvious anymore because this is what I do and constantly tour. You might see that a neighbor has a Dodge vehicle and they ask questions. They know a little bit about different vehicles and stuff, but on the senior market, most people don’t just occasionally drop into a community to check it out just because they’re bored for a little bit, like somebody might swing into a dealership or something like that.

I’m not the one that’s gonna live there. I might in my mind thinking this one’s a better fit, but you never know which one feels more comfortable to them and which one feels more like home. From there, depending on the situation, we might have to help a little more. Some other situations, they might say alright, we’re good, we can walk through and wrap this up here with the community, get it done.

There’s some situations I help way more and depending on what they need. Do they need to get some of their financial situation figured out, do they need to get their estate figured out, do they need to sell their house? I then can recommended different professionals to them to help guide them in the right direction. Ultimately it’s up to them to who they want to call and use, but there’s people that I’ve met with that I trust and similar to yourself, that I recommend out to others to say “Hey, here’s somebody I’ve met with, I recommend, here’s who you should call to help that.” We just try to help walk them through the process and in the end to make this process as easily as it can be for them.

He had gotten to where the kids took the car away from him, so they weren’t driving, they weren’t socializing. He was thinking he was okay just doing crossword puzzles and his wife, it was really affecting her because all she really had was him to talk to. They weren’t getting the social aspect, but then for him to see the coffee shop. It really opened him up too, he knew he could be in his room, under one roof he could walk down the hall and have all the meals he wanted. He could have the exercise area, but he could have the coffee and the socialization all under one roof.

That’s the biggest thing, most people I meet, they’re struggling with they’re not getting the socialization. They’re not eating correctly, and they’re having some issues maybe taking their medication. All of that gets handled in a nice assisted living community, but they are still free to come and go as they want. That’s probably the other big misconception. People think that they’re getting put in there, they’re getting locked down at 7:00 at night, they’re getting woke up at 8:00 in the morning. It’s not that. They can come and go as they want. If their kids want to pick them up and go somewhere for the weekend or whatever, they can do anything they want.  It’s just they have somebody there to help them as needed.

Even my parents are that same way, why would you cook or take that time, your mom was the best cook in the world when she was cooking for four or five people every night. Now she’s cooking for two people, they don’t want to eat leftovers the next four or five days. They go out all the time. I think you really see that scenario of how much you really go down and enjoy the food because they’re not eating and cooking the meals they used to. They get it right down the hall, so why cook in your room? They still have that option, if they maybe want to do a casserole or bake some different cookies, they can still do that. Life’s not totally getting stripped away from them just because they moved into a community.

Better scenario that I always say is the people that are looking out a month, two months, it just makes it more enjoyable as opposed to waiting until something happens or in rehab and now the son or daughter making the decision as to where to go for the senior. That stuff makes it a little tougher, but we can do it darn quick, that’s our specialty. We can do it instead of a family sitting there trying to call around to multiple communities, ask questions and say “This one’s got an opening, let’s go there.” We’ll make it work.  I can just from a quick conversation, narrow down. Even when I’m meeting with a family or somebody, as they’re sitting there, I can pretty much in my mind, I’ve already come up with here’s the best two or three fits. The biggest difference of why even when I’m meeting them I don’t say “Here’s the three communities we can go to”, is because I go home or back to the office and before I even look up and suggest those communities, we’re looking up the state’s care and violation history to make sure that community isn’t having issues.

We want it to be safe as well.  Once we do that and we see, yep that community’s safe, we’re good, let’s go check it out and go down that road.

People would be amazed at some of our communities. We’ve got some wonderful communities around, but even some of the nice communities at times they’ll have it where they’re having a lot of medication errors popping up. If I have somebody that needs a lot of help with medication, I’m probably not gonna be suggesting that community. If they say we really want to see this community, I’ll let them know, here’s what’s going on there, keep this in mind of what’s happening or you have a community that’s got some allegations of abuse, so we check with that. That’s also tied in to the database that we’re always looking up for safety, but we stay in contact with those that we’ve helped place.

Those that have picked a community, we’ve built a friendship, so it’s fun to stop in, visit with them, say hi, see how they’re doing. Also, they are now our eyes on the inside to say that we can talk to them and they’ll let us know that a community is doing everything they promised and said comparative to nope, they’re not doing this, this and this for me and that’s what they told us they would do on the tour. That’s another reason we go on the tour is because we’re not there to try to fill a room. Unfortunately, most of our marketers are wonderful people and do a great job, but their job is also to fill a room. I’ve seen it different scenarios where maybe they’ve said a few things that maybe aren’t 100% accurate because they’re trying to fill that room.

I truly feel that by having someone like us tour with them, they’re not gonna go and say anything or if they are, at the end I’ll let a family know and tell them “They said this, maybe they’ve changed, maybe they’ll do that, but from everything I know and everything I’ve seen, don’t take that as one of your main factors to pick this community.”

Once you become an escape risk, then it pretty much makes it to where that community has to ask you to leave and then definitely, we’re there for that family again to assist them that said a couple years ago or even six, eight months ago, mom went into assisted living, now we’re having this kind of issue, what are your thoughts? Even if they need to go to skilled services, it’s talking to them to help guide them in the right direction to another good community in the area

Thankfully, she called me, we were able to get her husband into a nice community and then I ran into her a month later out at a different event and she was bouncing off the walls like a different person. I was amazed at it and every time I’ve run into her or seen her, she’s happy, he’s happy, yes, he’d still love to go home, but she couldn’t take care of him. Now, she goes and visits him I think every day, and she’s back to being a wife again as opposed to a caregiver and it’s wonderful to see how different it’s changed both their lives, but especially hers because she was done.