"For many, there's a sense that social workers only help poor people," Baddeley says. "Geriatric social workers have been around for as long as social work has been." She works for the city of Cupertino as its case manager, working full time at the Cupertino Senior Center and enjoying the many personalities that come through her door. "You don't get to be 80 by being unintelligent about things," she says.

Baddeley offers seminars at the senior center on the various issues of aging, including grief over the death of a loved one and help for caregivers of the elderly. New sets of classes are beginning throughout the month of September. Seniors can also stop by and talk with her during drop-in office hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays and talk about anything from problems ranging from health insurance to nursing homes. Baddeley's door is open to seniors themselves and any family members looking for advice.

"People aren't necessarily ready to deal with these kinds of problems, or even know what to do," she says. She found that her expertise helped when she was faced with a situation familiar to some of her clients—a parent becoming more fearful and isolated in advanced age. Because she knew her way around senior services, she was able to get an in-home assessment and other tasks accomplished in three days—much shorter than the typical time.

This experience helps Baddeley assist the people in her caregiver seminars, offerings that are mainstays of senior centers. "They can experience the solidarity of other people who are in the same boat," she says. "They have to learn to take care of themselves first." Such groups give caregivers the opportunity to explore and get feedback on elder-care options others may have already investigated. "I generally just sit back. Those groups almost run themselves," she says. "People have to work these things out under their own steam."

Another standard support group that requires more structure is bereavement support. The monthly classes address specific issues in each of four meetings, including the stages of grief, reviewing finances and how to handle the holidays. But she has found in all of her seminars that individual responses can guide the course. "People who are bereaved have to be in control of what they do," she says.

This tendency has pushed Baddeley to initiate another bereavement course this fall called "What Next?" that attends to remaining bereavement issues. The seminar was generated by requests. "There are people who are ready to move on, but they're still grappling," she says. This is just one example of how Baddeley learned what the community needs in nearly six years of serving the seniors of Cupertino.

With Cupertino's large Asian population finding its way to the senior center, she offers Mandarin translation services during her Tuesday office hours. "It can be challenging to the new immigrant population. Services aren't always responsive to their needs," she says. The juxtaposition of how seniors are treated in the two divergent cultures has been a rich learning experience for her.

"I think Americans underestimate how much we respect our elders," she says. "In fact, we hold a certain respect that works against the elder because we are very independent. We don't want to take that away from them." These underlying tendencies can create complications in already tangled situations. But Baddeley has found that another consequence of being in Silicon Valley causes many more problems.

"The cost of housing in Santa Clara County does not coincide with what seniors are taking in through Social Security and their pensions," she says. Most senior citizens require subsidized housing, but the wait list for such units can stretch out for years. Baddeley says this, the cost of prescriptions and transportation difficulties pose the greatest financial problems for her seniors, and she hopes to make them more accessible.

Thankfully, the county is generous with funding for senior services. Santa Clara County provides funding for the Silicon Valley Council on Aging, which bankrolls Baddeley's position along with the city of Cupertino. "The city wants to make sure seniors stay active, so they're generous enough to fund a social worker," she says. The Senior Center, which opened in 2001, was sensitively designed to meet the unique needs of the elderly. "Being healthy is important to being happy."

Baddeley believes in what she does, so despite the relative popularity of her services now, she still wants to see her numbers grow. Scholarships are offered for the $20 cost of certain support groups, and she says she can typically find benefits and discounts that many senior citizens are unaware of. But beyond that, the ability to provide sanity to new, confusing situations gives her much satisfaction. "How each family resolves life crises is different, but life's a process. What we learn now can help someone else down the road," she says.