"It's a respite for me," Reiner says.

For 25 years the Cupertino center has been relieving caregivers such as Reiner by providing social day care services for seniors who are dependent.

Reiner drops off 90-year-old Don at 9:30 a.m. and picks him up at 2:30 p.m. During those hours, she says she gets her chores done. She goes grocery shopping and to her own doctor's appointments. She also has time to assist her church with "mini church services" in nearby nursing home facilities.

Monday through Friday, Live Oak's trained professional staff and volunteers supply breakfast, lunch, a full day's activities and exercise to frail adults who need supervision.

Activities include group crossword puzzles, discussing the daily news, playing bingo, singing oldies, playing balloon volleyball or visits from volunteers and their pets or moms with their babies.

The seniors at Live Oak remain seated while they exercise, and the movements are gentle but they have purpose. For instance, one exercise has the seniors opening one hand wide while the other closes. This exercise requires the mind to work as well as the body.

The clients benefit from the social interaction and recreation.

People who care for elderly relatives or spouses with dementia say they feel pressure and stress from worrying about their loved ones because dementia patients may wander away and place themselves in unsafe situations.

"These caregivers, they deserve the help we are giving them," says Colleen Hudgen, executive director of Live Oaks five facilities. (There are facilities in, Gilroy, Los Gatos, Cupertino and two in San Jose.)

"Without [the day care service] I'd go out of my mind. It's really been my savior for me, and for her," Sharon Taylor says.

Taylor takes her 88-year-old mother to Live Oak four days a week and, like the others, says her mother loves it there.

Taylor's mother, Emma Harris, doesn't sit and watch TV there as she would at home, nor does she nap all day. Instead she exercises, interacts and socializes with other seniors, including Sunnyvale's Don Reiner.

Reiner and Harris suffer from Alzheimer's, and most of the center's clients have some form of dementia, which includes loss of memory, judgment and concentration. These conditions are can also be accompanied by emotional disturbance or personality change.

Caregivers say that the attitude and happiness of their loved ones quickly showed improvement when they started attending Live Oak.

"There are clients who come alive because they have new friends. They come in, they laugh, they dance, they sing," Hudgen says.

Harris moved to Campbell in January to live with Taylor. Before that, Harris had lived with her son (Taylor's brother) in Sacramento for four years.

"When I first got her, she was really, really negative. She was always saying negative things. She doesn't do that any more," Taylor says. "It's probably going to increase her life. Her depression seems to be gone a lot. It has given her reason for hope. She laughs a lot again."

Karen Lorenz, program director at the Cupertino site, says that frequently clients who start out attending the day care once a week usually increase attendance to two or more days when they see the difference, and the clients start to look forward to their time there.

Harris started with two days a week and now goes four times. Don Reiner began with one day a week and now goes three days. Cupertino's Marilyn Garten, who takes her mother, Elizabeth Winter, to Live Oak, had a similar experience.

"[My mother] was so happy about going that I signed her up for a second day," Garten says. She soon increased to three days.

"It makes a difference in my happiness too because I was feeling so isolated because I couldn't get out," Garten says. "It's just been wonderful."

Located at St. Jude's Episcopal Church on McClellan Road, the Cupertino Live Oak program began as Cupertino Senior Services in 1980 and merged with Live Oak two years ago.

Janet Hill was the first program director at Cupertino Senior Services and now volunteers there.

The merge between Cupertino Senior Services—which became the fifth Live Oak location—and Live Oak made sense, Hudgen says. The two nonprofit programs were able to pool their resources.

Fees are charged on a sliding scale based on income, but Hudgen says no one is turned away regardless of income. Funding comes from multiple sources including the cities of Sunnyvale and Cupertino, United Way, Council on Aging and Santa Clara County.

Hill says not much has changed since the service began except the number of clients has increased, especially the number of men.

About a third of the clients at Cupertino's Live Oak are men, making it stand out from the other four locations, which have fewer men, Lopez says. The gender mix has inspired some of the ladies to dress up a bit.

"As more men joined we have a couple of women who started to wear jewelry and put on makeup," she says.

Cupertino Live Oak Day Services, 20920 McClellan Road, 408.973.0905, www.liveoakadultdaycare.org.