READ THE INTERVIEW.

KCBS Announcer:
Navigating life’s challenges when you become an older adult can be a lot to do when you’re on your own, but seniors in the Bay Area have someone they can turn to. KCBS’s Mary Hughes has more.

Mary Hughes:
Cadence Senior Living in Millbrae is a renovated building. Nice rooms, common areas, and lots of light. It’s a place where seniors find community, something that means a lot to Anita Varelas.

Anita Varelas:
My parents instilled in me, at a young age, to honor the seniors around us and to care for them.

Mary Hughes:
Anita has taken all those years of knowledge and work and turned it into Neighborly Senior Placement, which she says is the first senior placement service handling every senior facility in the Bay Area.

Anita Varelas:
No one really plans for senior living. It’s often something that happens abruptly for most seniors. So I started my company to help people to facilitate and find the most appropriate one for them and really ease the process.

Mary Hughes:
And she has recently helped her 1,000^th elderly person find housing in an assisted living facility, continuing the work that is closest to her heart.

Anita Varelas:
There’s so much meaning to it. It is extremely rewarding to utilize my wealth of knowledge to help a family and to hear them tell me, “Anita, I couldn’t have done this without you…” is why I do it.

Mary Hughes:
Mary Hughes, KCBS.