Community Highlights: Meet Natalie Lemke of Sea Breeze Adult Day Center

Hi Natalie, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I was born and raised in Switzerland and came to the US in 1989 for six months to learn English. A few months after my arrival, I met my current husband and ended up staying in the US… After earning a degree in Finance from USF, I had a successful career at Salomon Brothers/Citibank for 22 years. Early in 2016 working as a Senior VP in Project Management at Citibank, I started having the urge to start my own business.

At the same time, my sister and I were struggling with providing long-distance care to our mother who was diagnosed with dementia and who fought to remain in her home and not be placed in a long-term care facility. Inspired by my personal situation, I decided to open an adult day center to provide daytime care to adults (mainly seniors) who need assistance and supervision during the day. The vast majority of our members have a dementia diagnosis. Day centers like our allow people to continue living at home with their families while receiving quality care in a social and home-like environment during the day (or part of the day), allowing family caregivers to pursue a career or other interests. Due to numerous regulations, opening an adult day center is time-consuming and costly, but after nine long months of hard work, we finally obtained our license from the Agency of Health Care Administration on January 19, 2017.

The first two years, as with most new businesses, was very hard mainly because of the lack of knowledge in the community about adult day centers. Every time a member joined our center the family would tell us how wonderful the service is and if they just knew about it sooner. Marketing is a huge challenge for a niche business, as small-sized businesses often don’t have the revenues to reach their target audiences. In late 2019, we were caring for about 30 members a day, but then COVID-19 appeared in Spring 2020. Being an essential business, our center remained open all through 2020, but with much-reduced attendance and many health precautions. We are happy to say that we have continued to care for the most vulnerable people in our community without any COVID cases as our center.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
We had three main challenges. The first one was the licensing and opening of the center. We had to meet and comply to an enormous amount of regulations, which took time, knowledge and money. The second challenge was the lack of knowledge in the community about adult day centers and how to let people who need our services know about us. The third challenge was COVID. Even though we are an essential business, the pandemic has had a major impact on us. But most importantly, we have managed to care for our attending members without any positive cases.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Sea Breeze Adult Day Center?
We are an adult day center providing daytime to care to adults (mainly seniors) who would benefit from socialization and engagement in a supervised environment. We provide an amazing array of engaging, fun and therapeutic activities throughout the day that bring joy and companionship to our members, improving their quality of life. I am most proud of my amazing and dedicated staff who love what they do and our members and families recognize that every day. You just cannot get the same quality care at our affordable prices through any other care option.

So maybe we end on discussing what matters most to you and why?
To do something that has a positive impact on people’s lives. It is important to me at a personal and professional level. When I was younger, I loved the fast-paced and exciting work environment in the financial industry, but as I have been getting older, I increasingly feel the need to do something that has a more direct and tangible impact on local people in our community. It feels more real and rewarding.

Pricing:

• Our hourly rate is $12 per our inclusive of lunch and snacks.

Contact Info:

• Address: Sea Breeze Adult Day Center 618 94th Ave North St. Petersburg, FL 33702 727-623-9092
• Email: natalie@seabreezeadultdaycenter.com
• Website: seabreezeadultdaycenter.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seabreezeadultdaycenter/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/seabreezeadultdaycenterstpete/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/SeaBreeze_ADC
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7OhcAIrDGZZzahsoO6Cc_g
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/sea-breeze-adult-day-center-saint-petersburg
• Other: https://www.pinterest.com/seabreezeADC/_created/

Image Credits
Images taken by Natalie Lemke, Olivia Tripp and Mary Jo Allison