Vista Cove Senior Living Located in Quiet Rancho Mirage Neighborhood

Vista Cove Senior Living in Rancho Mirage.

Floyd Rhoades, Vista Cove’s founder and CEO, has more than four decades of experience working in long-term care. Beginning his career as a Presbyterian pastor, he was later employed in a series  of skilled nursing, assisted living, and mental health facilities. He worked as an administrator that led to becoming the CEO of several national companies and opened Vista Cove 15 years ago by acquiring a property in Rancho Mirage that was designed specifically for memory care.

Memory care communities are for individuals with Alzheimer’s or other  forms of dementia, and this 56-bed community, comprising two buildings in a quiet residential neighborhood, makes it ideal to care for residents. “Most memory care programs in the Coachella Valley consist of a wing within an assisted living building,” Rhoades says. “We have an entire campus, which gives us more specialization, more focus.”

Vista Cove boasts a number of unique activities, including its Life Enrichment Activity Program™ (LEAP) and a program called Namaste that combines massage, music therapy, and aromatherapy. The Day Break™ program allows adults with memory impairment to visit and participate in Vista Cove’s activities for a day. “It’s essentially a daycare program that provides an entrée for people to experience our community and determine if it’s appropriate for them,” Rhoades says. “It also benefits those at home who take care of them. Caregivers experience a lot of stress and physical deterioration, and this gives them a break.”

As for social activities, among the most popular is karaoke. “Music lives in a different part of the brain,” Executive Director Jack Poyfair says, “so even when people are highly impaired and have no short-term memory, they can remember songs.” Another favorite is beach ball volleyball, played indoors in chairs. There are also card games, shuffleboard, movies, bowling, visiting entertainers, and more.