{"id":1318380,"date":"2020-02-22T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-23T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/?p=993843"},"modified":"2020-02-24T12:35:01","modified_gmt":"2020-02-24T19:35:01","slug":"leading-by-listening-heritage-park-senior-home-director-connects-with-staff-residents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/leading-by-listening-heritage-park-senior-home-director-connects-with-staff-residents\/","title":{"rendered":"Leading by listening: Heritage Park senior home director connects with staff, residents"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Heritage Park Executive Director Brian Zaragoza speaks with nurses and staff at the care center on Thursday afternoon.<\/strong>
Chelsea Self \/ Post Independent<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Mike Smith started working at Heritage Park, a senior care facility in Carbondale, 25 years ago, when his current boss was one year old.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve said that a couple times. I don\u2019t mean it as a put-down,\u201d Smith, weekend supervisor for the nursing facility, said of Heritage Park executive director Brian Zaragoza.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just, how impressed I am with him. He\u2019s got a good head on his shoulders,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n

Zaragoza started as executive director in January 2019, one month after obtaining his nursing home administrator certification and eight months after receiving his MBA in health care administration from the University of Colorado at Denver.<\/p>\n

Delaware to Denver to the \u2018dale<\/strong><\/p>\n

Zaragoza knew he wanted to go into health care administration by the end of high school, and health care runs in his blood.<\/p>\n

His grandfather emigrated from the Philippines to be a doctor in the U.S., and his parents both work in medicine near Zaragoza\u2019s hometown of Wyoming, Delaware.<\/p>\n

\u201cI actually thought when I was younger I wanted to be a doctor,\u201d Zaragoza said, but science wasn\u2019t his thing, and he didn\u2019t want to attend school for that long.<\/p>\n

He did want to make a difference, though, so he pursued hospital administration. The program in Denver dovetailed with another lifelong passion: Skiing and snowboarding.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until he started his masters program that he thought to work in hospice and nursing homes.<\/p>\n

Zaragoza didn\u2019t expect to have this kind of job so soon after graduating.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really thought I was going to go into hospital administration, that was kind of the more glorious healthcare sector of healthcare administration. Not everybody graduates college saying, \u2018I\u2019m going to be a hospice administrator,\u2019 it just kind of happens. I\u2019m really glad it did,\u201d Zaragoza said.<\/p>\n

He applied to be an administrator in training with Life Care Centers of America, which owns Heritage Park, when he got a call from one of the company\u2019s vice presidents.<\/p>\n

Zaragoza recalls the conversation: \u201c\u2018Hey Brian, I know you interviewed for the administrator in training program, but I just had a building open up in Carbondale. What do you think about just going in headfirst, and jumping right into the fire?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Are you old enough to be running this place?<\/strong>\u2018<\/p>\n

Zaragoza, who is 26, walks the halls of Heritage Park, greeting residents by name, and making sure staff members are doing well. He says he doesn\u2019t recognize all of the 80 or so residents by name, but he\u2019s pretty close.<\/p>\n

He does make an effort to know each of the 100-plus staff at Heritage Park.<\/p>\n

He regularly meets people, usually family members of prospective residents, who joke about his age: \u201cHow old are you? Are you old enough to be running this place? You\u2019re the big boss?\u201d<\/p>\n

Zaragoza was nervous when he first started: Would the staff welcome him? Resent him? Would they be resistant to changes he would try to make?<\/p>\n

His trepidation turned out to be wrong \u2014 people welcomed him with open arms.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
Brian Zaragoza has been the executive director at Heritage Park Care Center in Carbondale since January of 2019.<\/strong>
Chelsea Self \/ Post Independent<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

But he also decided to start out as a helper, not a reformer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went in with the mentality that I wasn\u2019t going to change anything, I wasn\u2019t going to try and bring any new ideas and stir up a ruckus, I just introduced myself to everybody, talked to everybody on the floor, helped out where I could,\u201d Zaragoza said.<\/p>\n

When the staff saw him roll up his sleeves and get his hands dirty, they respected him and then began to bring him ideas about how to improve care for Heritage Park residents.<\/p>\n

\u201cI realized being a leader, more than anything, means being a listener,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Smith said he what he appreciates most is Zaragoza\u2019s ability to listen.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s very involved with all aspects of the staff, and the incoming residents. He knows a lot of the residents by name, always introduces himself to the new residents,\u201d Smith said. \u201cSome of the past directors didn\u2019t always do that, they were more in their office doing the business end of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The best part of the day<\/strong><\/p>\n

As Zaragoza walks the halls, he greets guests in the corridors of the deceptively expansive Heritage Park building.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been meaning to give you a high alert,\u201d a woman in a wheelchair tells him. \u201cIs everything OK?\u201d Zaragoza asks, smiling.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the cheesecake,\u201d she replies. It was apparently very good. \u201cIf there\u2019s a piece left, you need to grab it,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Walking through the corridors and interacting with the guests is the best part of the day for Zaragoza.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust to joke around with them, and get a smile is huge\u2014for them, yes, but also for myself. My day can get bogged down with all kinds of stuff,\u201d Zaragoza said.<\/p>\n

The most important part of the job, Zaragoza said, is keeping residents and their families happy.<\/p>\n

But a \u201cclose second\u201d is the paperwork \u2014 making sure the facility is complying with all state and federal regulations, which is necessary and important, but also time-consuming.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be able to walk out this door, walk down the hall, and actually connect with a human being who we\u2019re taking care of is really rewarding,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Like surrogate grandparents<\/strong><\/p>\n

It also keeps him grounded, and reminds him of the value of his work at Heritage Park.<\/p>\n

 \u201cSome of these residents, they don\u2019t have loved ones, they don\u2019t have family members that are caring for them, they don\u2019t have that support,\u201d he said. \u201cAt the end of the day, it\u2019s nice to know that you\u2019ve made a difference in people\u2019s lives, or impacted them in some way.\u201d<\/p>\n

A similar feeling has kept Mike Smith coming back to work at Heritage Park day after day.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like going to see grandma and grandpa everyday, and having 50 of them,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re just like surrogate grandparents. They become like family,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n

tphippen@postindependent.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Heritage Park Executive Director Brian Zaragoza speaks with nurses and staff at the care center on Thursday afternoon.Chelsea Self \/ Post Independent Mike Smith started working at Heritage Park, a senior care facility in Carbondale, 25 years ago, when his current boss was one year old. \u201cI\u2019ve said that a couple times. I don\u2019t mean […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1318380","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-05 05:34:43","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1318380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1318380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1318380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1318398,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1318380\/revisions\/1318398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1318380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1318380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1318380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}