High-Tech Help Is a Phone Call Away for Sun City West’s Retirees

The biggest trouble most senior citizens face with a personal computer is learning to use it.

Many retired before the machines became popular in companies, where most adults learn to use PCs. And some are daunted by the prospect of taking community college classes with students who are 40 or 50 years younger.

The 28,000 retirees living in this Phoenix suburb don’t have to worry about that. Someone living here who buys a PC needs only to pick up the phone to get a team of golden gadgetheads dispatched from Computers West, the town’s computer club.

“I imagine some of us are working a good 40 hours a week,” said Sam MacDonald, vice president of Computers West. “My wife and I have had to agree that on Friday I don’t do any of this.”

In addition, the club offers classes six days a week and lets people try out software from a library. A new activities center will contain a computer room for more than a dozen PCs, each with cable-line access to electronic networks.

The assistance given in Sun City West is an exception. Many cities have computer programs at recreation centers and community colleges, but few are geared to senior citizens.

Nearby Glendale Community College has developed an innovative drop-in center where people of all ages can learn to use computers at their own pace.

“The intensity for learning here is something like you’ve never seen,” said Mark Montanus, who led development of the school’s multimillion-dollar “computer pit.”

SeniorNet, which started as an on-line community, has sprouted 60 senior citizens-only learning centers around the country. Six are in New York City and three are in San Francisco, but they are also in cities as small as Nacogdoches, Texas, and Smyrna, Tenn.