Memory Care Communities in Pinole, CA

"I have an application to Carlton Senior Living Pleasant Hill. I saw the assisted living, and it was a very good experience. They're so friendly, I like the layout of the apartment, all the services, the laundry, and the meals in the rooms. They have very nice one-bedroom apartments. The people I saw in the hallways seemed happy."

"We're considering it because it's a 10-minute walk from where we live. The overall experience with my tour was very good. We got a lot of information and we saw the facility. It was good. We saw several rooms. The place was clean, neat, and well-lit. It looked safe for the residents to be in. I would describe the staff as caring, thoughtful, and non-invasive."

"I toured The Point at Rockridge. The room was spacious and had good large windows, so it was well-lit. It had its own bathroom that was appropriately done. It had very adequate space for the storage of clothing. The room itself was not bad; it had a good feel. The large windows made it more welcoming and it was a spacious room. There would be plenty of room for a dresser, a bed, side tables, a small table, and a large chair that would easily fit in the room. I thought it was quite generous and welcoming. The staff who toured me was very informative and took the time. And this was a walk-in. We didn't even have an appointment. Everybody that we met was gracious and nice and seemed tuned to what was going on. I feel quite confident that it would be a place where my mother could be comfortable and would find a lot of the services that would be helpful for her to be safe in a friendly environment. The other thing is that, if memory care was not necessarily where my mother wanted to be, but assisted living, that seemed to be an open possibility. They seemed to have some fair flexibility. Another thing is that the staff that was doing the tour with us, ran the place, and she got into it because she had parents who had Alzheimer's that she was a personal caregiver for until they died. She went back to college to get a degree so that she could be helpful to people who were going through what she had gone through handling and dealing with parents with dementia. So I think it gave her a particular insight and competency for the position. I think that helps the entire ethos of the place."

"I toured Atria Park of Lafayette. It's a very attractive and well-maintained facility. It looked very colorful and was not as tightly laid out as other facilities. It was spread out and easy to tour. It's a very warm environment. They have a beauty salon, haircutting facilities, and a small exercise facility. It was not a very large area, but sometimes, they brought in assistance to help people work out in the facility if they wished. The staff was very nice, and they took their time and told me how everything was handled, including whether you could do your laundry yourself or have it done for you and how often the housekeeping came, so that was all explained to me. It was a clean place, and there was a nice dining area as well. They also have a small dining area you could bring your family to if you want to invite them."

"The Bluffs at Hamilton Hill seemed a little bigger, which was good. I liked that. The location is very nice. It's an extension of where the old hospital was and the building itself, the structure, is very nice and very, very well located. It's essentially almost across the street from where we live. They had a snack bar and there was a kind of a little cafe, not a big restaurant, with few tables and a coffee bar. I went into a couple of different rooms that were slightly different sizes, but they seemed to be a little larger and a little more homelike rather than a studio or hotel. Jeanette was excellent."

"My husband seems to have settled a little bit now at The Carlton. They have gone through a lot with him; it has not been easy. I chose this community because my husband is pretty young at 70 years old and has advanced Alzheimer's. He is a difficult case because he gets combative and aggressive. I needed to find a place that is comfortable and could handle that type of behavior. Carlton Senior Living Poets Corner is bigger, clean, and has quite a bit of space for my husband to explore and move around. They have a nice outdoor area, which was also important to me because he enjoys going outside. Carlton has several men closer in age to my husband and in a similar kind of situation. I felt he could make some friends he could watch basketball or football with. They said, 'We don't kick people out. We are professional." I feel their employees are professional, kind, and seem to really care. With their activities, they have lots of things going on and try to make it a pleasant, fun place to be."

"My mom is happy at the moment at Cogir of San Rafael Memory Care. They have a new director, and I'm fairly confident that this will be good. They went through two directors in a couple of months and that was hard. We went there a year and a half ago, so my mom has been there for a while now. The appearance of the food was very beautiful. It's tasty, and it meets all the nutritional needs. We had beautiful Easter, Christmas, and Thanksgiving meals there. But their daily meals are also well-rounded and delicious. When you first come in, there's a beautiful foyer. You're greeted at the front desk by a very nice gentleman who has a lovely British accent that makes you feel kind of relaxed. It's very clean, open and spacious. It smells good. There are usually 2 or 3 residents sitting around reading the newspaper or having conversations. They have three different areas that they use for the activities. They have a small TV room for morning coffee, and they also do their televised church services there, which is really great. Upstairs, they have an activity room that they also use in the evening for watching movies, and they do all their exercises in there. And then they use their dining room for larger things like different musicians come in at least three times a week. There's a guy that comes in twice a month to do Tai Chi, and there is a person that comes in twice a month that does a gardening thing with them called Elder Grow. That's just amazing to see the seniors with their hands in the soil and connecting with plants. It's just powerful. On top of that, they have a morning sitting exercise every day. There's a lovely park around the corner where they can walk in a sort of circle. They take everybody out whether they're in wheelchairs or walkers or walking, and they get them out and moving every single day. They're great activities. They're well-rounded activities. I felt that we were paying less than some of the other places that I had talked to. I thought it was great value for our money. My mother has a junior bedroom, so she has like a living space and then an actual bedroom. It's really nice because she went from being in her own apartment to having this space. In the interim, we had been in a small facility up in Healdsburg, and she said it felt like being in a hotel, and now she says she feels like she has a home. The staff is amazing. They're very attentive. They make sure my mom is up every morning and dressed in clothes that match. They helped my mom pick out clothes and do her hair. And then they make sure everybody gets to all the meals and let her know when all the activities are there. Sometimes my mom just wants to read her newspaper in the morning, and they let her be. I think one of the best things I like about Cogir is their new communication method. They use something called the LifeLoop, which is an app. It lets me know what activities my mother has attended, and what activities are being offered. Cogir was the only one that just had memory care, and that appealed to me because the staff was more trained, and it didn't feel like they were locking away the memory care people."

"We were able to visit The Vincent. It was not a building that was converted, so I liked that it was built originally for seniors. The walls are soundproof. The food was excellent. The amenities are great. The staff members that we met were knowledgeable. They train their caregivers there at the facility. It's not a corporate facility, but they have everything a person could want. We actually left a deposit to hold a room, but the only problem with them is that the room is on the third floor. My friend has mobility issues, and so he is afraid of being on any floor in case there is an earthquake or a fire. He is afraid that he would not be able to get out of the building, and that's his only hesitation. I was going to call back to see if there was any chance that they would have a resident that wanted to move up to the third floor, and so my friend is definitely looking for a ground floor. They offer a discount on the community fee. The building had a very warm and natural feeling. The grab bars looked like chair molding around the walls. They had linen tablecloths and a full table setting service. Everything was just top-notch and clean. There is a library, and they have what's running in the theater now in their movie facility, so it's not old movies. At The Vincent, it was like eating in a restaurant. It was pizza day the day that we were there, and they had their own brick pizza oven to cook pizzas. To order from the menu, everything was fresh, and nothing frozen. It was a totally different experience."

"I was visiting a friend at Lakeside Park. It was a very nice facility. It was well run. They were very friendly and very attentive to the people who lived there. They would take them out for walks in the neighboring park along Lake Merritt. They were very supportive of their patients, but also very concerned about their safety. The staff was competent and caring. They had a nice courtyard outside and they're also half a block from a big park along Lake Merritt. They seemed to have several activities going on every day."

"Carlton Senior Living Downtown Pleasant Hill is the place that I want to send my loved one. My wife is there and they're just really professional. It's a place that gives you warmth. There's no odor or any urine smell or anything, and they have separate dining rooms for memory care. So, it's a nice place to go. The staff is excellent and very caring people. They have a lot of things to do, like bingo, music, entertainers that come in, painting, little handicrafts, and different things similar to that. Both the food and their dining area were excellent, and they have waitresses and waiters that clean up for you. If you have trouble eating in memory care, they have people that assist you. They're also very persnickety about who comes in. You need your COVID shot and your mask. So, they just take good care of them."

"We toured The Kensington, which we are quite pleased with. Everybody was very nice to us. The people who run the units have all been just super. We're physically pretty mobile, we still drive, and we still go to all of our doctor's appointments and do our own shopping. We're just trying to downsize a little bit and get away from many responsibilities of home maintenance and that type of thing, so independent living is what we're looking for right now. The Kensington is very good. We like the feeling of the place, and we like the amenities that they provided. It's been several months since we went out to visit it, and I have an appointment in a couple of weeks to go back and revisit. The staff members were very polite. They're very attentive to the people that they have. We were very impressed with the fact that they seemed to know the names of everybody who lives there. They call them by name when we pass them in the hallway. We met with some people in the units, and they gave good reviews. They've all said that they enjoy being there. We have no major negatives other than the gut feeling that this doesn't seem like a good fit for us. We had lunch with one of the people who lives there, and he was very informative and very polite. Everything was fine. The facilities were all very nice."

"The staff was incredibly kind from the moment we walked in. We felt welcome and supported.The facility was clean and well-maintained and had a warm home like atmosphere."

"I liked Drake Terrace. It was a smaller place and I think the employees have worked there a long time. The residents were friendly during the short time my husband was there. The food was really good. The staff was very good. I was very happy with them. Although the facility was not new, it was still nice."

"I toured the Oakmont of Mariner Point. It's beautiful and in a beautiful neighborhood, overlooking the water. I'm not choosing it because they don't have enough level of care. Janet and Charles are great. They gave a gift bag like a box of cookies but no sampling of meals. They didn't even show me rooms. I only talked to them and the dining room, they didn't show me. Maybe there wasn't a room that was clean at that moment. I don't know. I don't care, I didn't need to see the room because I knew it wasn't appropriate."