Every morning at about 8:10, Xue Ya Yu leaves her Visitacion Valley home and catches Muni’s 44 O’Shaughnessy. After a transfer and an 80-minute ride that takes her across San Francisco, the 84-year-old grandmother is at the Jackie Chan Senior Center, ready to go work. Yu, a bit frail but energetic and cheerful, has been ...
Mario Martinez is not a lonely man. He’s married and has four daughters, four sons-in-law and nine grandchildren. Yet the 65-year-old retired family therapist talks and thinks about loneliness quite a bit. “Sometimes isolation is forced upon us by health concerns, but a lot of times isolation is a choice,” he said. “And if you ...
It was one of those “aha” moments. Marianne Spencer Harvey was watching a concert on KQED some years ago. She was singing along and really enjoying herself when the camera panned across the audience: “And there were all those people with white hair. And it finally hit me. I’m in this generation,” she recalled. Still, ...
Is 73 too old to feel beautiful, travel the world, learn a musical instrument or lead an exercise class? Ask any of those questions to 73-year-old Susie Tyner and you’re likely to get a rather astonished look and a firm “No way.” Tyner, who is one of five older adults featured in the city’s recently ...
On a fine spring afternoon earlier this year, Chet Peeples found himself on Apple’s futuristic Cupertino campus. He wasn’t there as a tourist or a job-hunting techie. Peeples, a 64-year-old recovering addict, was there to appear in a promotional film as a stand-in for Apple CEO Tim Cook. Standing beside Tim Cook seemed utterly unexpected ...
