Lantern Crest

March 06, 2019

Jim and Madeline Koci were the first residents of the Lantern Crest Villas and tell their story of who they are and why they chose to live at Lantern Crest Senior Living.

Video Transcript:

- I'm Jim.

- And I'm Madeline.

- And we're the

- [Together] Kocis.

- I was born in Nebraska and grew up on a farm there until 1950, when I joined the Navy and came a pilot, served a little over 20 years. After I got out, I went to San Diego State, graduated from San Diego State. Taught school for about five years while I was starting up my own accounting and tax practice. In 1974, I started acquiring some rental properties and worked on that until I retired from that when I was 75 years old.

- I'm Madeline Sedlak Koci. I was born in Czechoslovakia and grew up more of a Hungarian than Czech. Came to the United States in 1949, lived in Los Angeles, graduated from high school and then worked until I married Jim in 1957. Joined the Navy with Jim and I traveled all over the Orient and ended up in San Diego and now at Lantern Crest.

- Since I've been at Lantern Crest, I've started a veterans group. We have about 20 or 22 members that meet on a monthly basis. We have a nice veterans picture board in the Lantern Crest bar on the third floor. We try to encourage all our veterans to participate in our programs.

- My hobbies, my main hobby's gardening. We had a garden full of roses and flowers at the house we lived in, but we still have, since we moved into a villa, we still have a nice garden and a lot of potted plants. You know, I like to read and catch up on the things, you know, doing things that I never had time for.

- I think the number one reason we made the choice was because we couldn't continue to live in the big, five bedroom, two-story house that we were in and we needed to downsize and we felt like, rather than move twice, if we moved into another smaller house, eventually we might have to move into a facility similar to this and so we decided to just make one move, get into a facility where we could gradually downsize our possessions until we can move into something smaller if we have to at a later date. Interesting feature and deciding factor for us was all the various activities that were available to us here. Exercises, games, movies, just almost endless here as to what we can participate in, from morning to evening, every day.

- We especially enjoy the people at Lantern Crest. Interesting people here. They have done a lot of traveling and a lot of interesting life experiences that we share, especially during dinner hour and lunch hour. And the staff is fantastic. We enjoy every one of them. They are very friendly and very helpful.

- The community is really a friendly community, family-oriented, and like Madeline says, so many of the people here have similar experiences to our own, military-wise, travel-wise, family-wise, so it's like almost being among your own family. Yeah, before we moved into Lantern Crest, we checked out several other similar facilities and none compared really favorably with Lantern Crest as far as programs and location especially and easy access. The dining program especially was interesting to us.

- Another attraction that we enjoy is that we are allowed to invite our family or friends to join us in the dining room for dinner or brunch or whatever and it just brings us closer to our families and we are able to enjoy sharing a meal with them.

- I would highly recommend Lantern Crest to anyone that's thinking about relocating. I especially would encourage people to try and make the decision, as we did at least, while you're still able to participate in the decision making and also the assistance in making the transition. I'm Jim.

- And I'm Madeline.

- And we're the

- [Together] Kocis.