Arizona€’s graying frontier offers glimpse of US challenges ahead

PARKER, Ariz. — Retiree Joyce Baker has always been fiercely independent, living on a five-acre spread in the Sonoran Desert where she wielded a chainsaw to manage the woodland, clambered up a ladder to inspect the roof of her home each year and dispatched rattlesnakes with a volley of shots from her .38 pistol.

But three years ago her now 85-year-old husband, Paul Baker, was diagnosed with dementia. He was subsequently hospitalized after a fall that shattered ribs, and by the time he returned to their remote home, Joyce Baker, 75, found that she could no longer cope.

“I thought, ‘I’ll keep the goals real simple. All I really have to do is keep Paul and me — and our two cats, who are also old — fed, clean and safe’ … But within just a few days, I discovered that those goals are not simple,” said Joyce Baker, who finally reached out for help. “I was literally at my wits’ end, going in circles … You get where you can’t organize your own thoughts, let alone help somebody with Alzheimer’s get organized.”

Baker and her husband are among the fortunate seniors receiving vital home care in sparsely populated La Paz County in far western Arizona, which has one of the highest proportions of residents 65 or older anywhere in the United States.

As of October this year, there has been an eightfold increase in the number of people on the waiting list for adult day health care and respite services like home-delivered meals and help with bathing and laundry — totaling 2,345 for Arizona and 425 in the tri-county area bordering California that includes La Paz County. The elder care crisis in far western Arizona is significant, professionals believe, since it may hold some clues to the demographic challenges faced by the United States as a whole in coming years as millions of members of the baby boom generation reach 65 at a rate of about 10,000 a day. 

In response to their needs, the Bakers got help from social services to put handrails in the bathroom to safeguard against further falls and also received freezer-ready home meals delivered to their home, at the end of a dirt road, once a week from the Community Senior Center in Parker, the La Paz County seat, 35 miles away.

“It makes life livable. There’s absolutely no way that I could shop for the food, prepare the food and clean up three times a day,” Joyce Baker said of the help that allows her to remain at home with her husband of 58 years. “If I didn’t have this help, I would be here alone because Paul would be in a facility.” 

But one of the insights from the graying frontier in far western Arizona — where the proportion of seniors exceeds projections for the rest of the country — is that the state and federal governments have not yet matched the growing needs of the region’s aging population with adequate funding.

About 76 million children were born in the baby boom, from 1946 to 1964, and the first of them reached retirement age four years ago. In coming years the number reaching 65 is expected to push the proportion of the U.S. senior population from 14.8 percent in 2000 to 20.3 percent in 2030, according to U.S. Census Bureau projections.

Boomers reaching retirement age can expect to live for another 20 years, on average — more than five years more than their grandparents’ generation in 1950 — during which they will draw Social Security and Medicare benefits. Preparing to meet their needs is a key challenge for policymakers in Washington.

One shift in recent years has been away from funding costly long-term institutional care for seniors to supporting elderly people like the Bakers in their own homes at a fraction of the cost — $1,978 per person per year, compare with more than $60,000 annually for nursing home care, according to WACOG figures.

Policymakers are counting on seniors to plan ahead for a longer retirement, taking greater care of their health through better diet and more exercise and by saving to meet additional costs or by continuing to work to see them through their senior years, which might stretch out to more than a quarter of their lives.

“We are hoping that we are going to be successful in getting the message to people of all ages about the importance of planning ahead,” said Edwin Walker, deputy assistant director for aging at the Administration for Community Living in Washington. “Everyone wants to live a good long life … but it’s not going to happen by itself.” 

Just outside Quartzsite, whose population swells by several hundred thousand each winter as snowbird retirees flock in, Ron and Nyna Moss take an early evening round of what locals call “tough golf,” swinging clubs bought from a charity shop over a nine-hole course marked out on the desert ground.

The twilight round does not skim from their retirement pot — there are no greens fees — and helps the couple with their goals of “being able to be healthy,” said Nyna Moss, a retired educator in her 70s. You need to “make sure you exercise a bit … be careful what you eat,” adding that staying fit “takes perseverance.”

In La Paz County, where retirees are drawn by its warm, dry winters and low property costs, Ken Griffin is taking steps to plan for his later years. A 62-year-old retired truck mechanic from Washington state, he has segued into a second career helping his wife Bonnie Griffin sell fabrics to retirees in the Arizona Sun Belt while banking his Social Security income.

“I need to keep moving,” said Ken Griffin, who drives several hundred miles a week with her to sell materials to quilters at open-air markets and senior centers in western Arizona, for which he earns $25 a day. His advice to those approaching retirement: “There’s nothing you can do about it. You better just understand it, accept it and do your best. It’s coming.” 

Then there is the issue of recognition. For Tilley, the pressing needs of a growing number of local seniors — as many as 60 percent of whom get by on $800 or less a month, in a county where 1 in 5 lives in poverty — do not seem to be as visible as those of other vulnerable groups.

“You don’t see commercials for helping with Meals on Wheels or feeding and keeping our seniors. You hardly ever see anything about that on TV. But you do see a lot about taking care of the kids, taking care of the animals,” she said, with a note of frustration in her voice. “How many commercials do you see about seniors? Very, very seldom, and usually it’s just something about reverse mortgages.” 

With lagging visibility and dwindling funding, Tilley and her team are left to fill the care gap. Last year she made up a shortfall of more than a quarter of the senior center’s budget with fundraisers and donation drives, activities she said take time away from her duties working directly with clients at the center.

“I hope our centers are funded enough where our directors can actually to do what they’re supposed to be doing, which is activities and nutrition education and education programs and stuff. I spend most of my time begging. You think I’m kidding, but I do,” she said in interview in her office.

Since losing state lottery funds five years ago, the Parker center has created a transportation program to take elderly clients living in remote areas to their doctor appointments. It also helps provide prescriptions, gas money, furniture and medical equipment (including crutches, walkers and wheelchairs) and assists with Medicare supplemental costs for clients on low incomes. 

“I’ve even paid property taxes for people because if they lose their home, then where am I going to put them?” said Tilley, who works 50 to 60 hours a week. “I have found people places to live. I have moved people into places. I have taken care of them. I have actually been the one standing beside the grave when they were lowered in, and nobody else. It’s hard. But what if they didn’t have anyone? There would be nobody.”

Tilley said it is her calling, although she could clearly do with more help.

“Sometimes they don’t understand this is a vital service we provide,” she said. “I don’t expect people to have my passion about it, but I would like them to have a little bit of concern and passion.”