Senior Living Advisors establishes Rio Rancho roots

Senior Living Advisors, an assistance company to help seniors find housing, joined the Rio Rancho community March 27 and celebrated with a ribbon cutting at the Rio Rancho Regional Chamber of Commerce.

The chamber expressed excitement about the company's prospects, saying it will greatly impact seniors.

"We're so excited about you getting your business going. It's a big step," Chamber President Jerry Schalow said.

While he was there to present the company with a chamber certificate, he also gave the city of Rio Rancho certificate as there wasn't a representative of the city present. Sandoval County Commission was there to represent themselves, though.

"I'm looking forward to hearing more about what you're doing someday. I might become a senior," Commissioner Dave Heil joked.

Mario Romero and his wife Darla, two senior advisors with the company, say they are excited to get started. They help seniors who are needing to move or wanting to move to either an independent living, an assisted living or a memory care housing situation.

According to Mario, there are more than 140 different types of communities for seniors in the Albuquerque and Rio Rancho area.

"That's a lot, and so, especially in an emergency situation, it becomes very difficult to navigate that to know where to even start, to know how much are all of these places and can we afford it or who has availability of who would be a good fit for my loved one," he said.

The advisors help with all that by helping seniors and their families figure out what will be best for them.

"More importantly with no stress on the family because what we're going to do is we're going to really handhold the family or the senior for that matter and kind of find out some important factors," Mario continued.

Some of those factors are care needs, cost, location and hobbies.

"Is there somewhere nearby, where the family can visit more often, those types of things?" he explained.

The Romeros have more than 20 years of combined experience working with seniors in various capacities including assisted living, memory care, home health care and hospice services.

For more information, visit seniorlivingadvisorsnm.com.