VERY IMPORTANT PEOPLE : From Memory Exercises to Physical Therapy, a Santa Ana Adult Health-Care Center Stretches the Limits of Old Age

Seated in a large circle, the group of about 20 people, mostly senior citizens, were reminiscing about picnics on a recent morning.

Carol Bade, a social worker at The V.I.P. Adult Day Health Care Center in Santa Ana, turned to a woman sitting in an armchair at her left.

“Mary, what would you bring to a picnic,” Bade asked the elderly woman with long white braided hair.

“I’d bring a dessert,” said Mary Baker Staberg, 94, and launched into an elaborate description of one favorite, detailing the ingredients: eggs, cream and fruit. “It was called ‘Cherry Vivian,”’ Staberg said. That reminded her of another, whose ingredients were so exotic, they drew laughter in the circle. “Whatever it was we ate it,” she said.

Simple story-telling, but for “Carol’s Group, as Bade refers to her morning circle of friends, it was also a memory exercise designed to keep its participants mentally alert and to draw out of themselves, she said.

It is just one of several activities offered at center to helps its adult clients become V.I.P.’s--or Very Independent People, hence the name V.I.P. center, said Shirleen Jones, co-founder and program director.

“Actually, our whole idea is to keep people as independent as possible and out of institutions,” said Jones.

The day care provides health care for adults who, due to age or physical infirmities, can no longer care for themselves, according to Jones.

It is a medical model day care center, meaning it is required to have:

* A full time nurse on duty.

* A full time activities director in charge of recreational activities.

* Program aides.

* Registered physical, occupational and speech therapists.

* Psychological services, which at the Center is covered by a licensed clinical social worker and a consultant psychologist.

* Some medical services, include medical monitoring and services by a physician.

The two-year-old Center is sponsored by the Feedback Foundation, whose basic function over the past 20 years has been to provide nutrition to the elderly. The center is licensed and monitored by the California Departments of Aging and of Health Services, under Title 22 of the state’s administrative code.

Its services are covered by Medi-Cal for those who qualify, Jones said. For others, rates are on a sliding scale so that those who really need it will not be turned away.

However, the center may not be for everyone in need of day care services.

“If someone is lonely they can go to a regular day care,” Jones said. “It’s that need for medical monitoring that we provide.”

“We like to make home visits (to the homes of prospective participants) because it gives us a clue to what’s really going on,” Jones said.

Perhaps the center’s most important offerings are the psychological and medical services, the director said.

“One of the all-pervasive things in the elderly is depression and so many physicians don’t treat it . . . ,” Jones said.

She related the experience of one 85-year-old woman who, when she first began going to the center, spent much of her time sitting in a chair in a corner, crying and crying. Once the psychological counciling began to take hold, however, the woman stopped crying and started to come out of her shell, Jones said.

Sylvia Smith, 69 of Tustin--who has been going to the center at her doctors’ recommendation following a debilitating stroke in August, 1986--vouched for the effectiveness of the physical therapy provided there.

“It’s been a very rewarding place,” Smith said. “I no longer wear a brace on my leg and the therapy is very good.”

The V.I.P Center, however, is not a nursing home. There are some plans to expand its hours in the future, but it now operates from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, and at the end of the day everybody goes home.

Some of the center’s clients live along, but most live with their families. And in some respects, Jones said, it is often their families that benefit the most from its services.

“Some (families) work and some need the relief” from looking after their infirm relatives, she said.

To a first time visitor, the Center is a storehouse of stories and life experiences.

For one visitor, Mary Baker Staberg recounted the time in 1930, when she climbed Pikes Peak, a 14,000 foot mountain in Colorado.

“I climbed up (the mountain) and went down the other side,” the Tustin resident said.

“I started at midnight and climbed all night. When I got two and a half miles from the top I didn’t think I was going to make it. But after a two and a half hour rest . . . I said ‘I’m going to make it.”’

And at 94, Mary Staberg recalls it as though it happened yesterday.