A Butler County organization will soon celebrate 10 years of keeping retirees out of retirement homes and in their favorite armchairs at home.

LIFE Butler County opened in September of 2008. Its staff is holding a celebration of LIFE's anniversary Oct. 3.

Ten-year veterans, like enrollment manager Janice Rodgers, say they've watched a small organization balloon in size.

“When we opened, we had three participants,” Rodgers said. “Now we have over 200.”

LIFE, or Living Independence for the Elderly, is the name for Pennsylvania's implementation of PACE, or the Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly. PACE is a federal Medicare and Medicaid program.

In 2008, Pennsylvania put out a request for proposals to start a LIFE program in a handful of suitable counties, including Butler County, according to Marla Frailey, the Butler center's director.

Lutheran Senior Life was already running a program in Beaver County, and from there it expanded to Butler County. Today's facility on West Diamond Street in Butler is in partnership between Lutheran Senior Life and Butler Health System.

Rodgers has other numbers to boast: the center had about 10 employees when it began, and today it employs over 100 in Butler County. The center started off operations in just half of the building it currently fills, expanding in 2017 from about a 50 client capacity to 107 clients.

So what is it really? Rodgers calls LIFE “an alternative to a nursing home.”

And when the time comes, LIFE, she said, lets its users meet death on their own terms.

“Most people don't want to pass away at the hospital,” Rodgers said. “They want to pass away at home.”

Participants take on LIFE as their insurance provider. They continue living at home and receive both a range of at-home medical services and programming at the center to serve as a social life and an exercise opportunity.

It's like a nursing home, but instead of wheeling its users to their rooms after an event, LIFE busses them back to their homes.

Participants are also connected with medical specialists in the county for treatment that the center's full-time physician, part-time physician and nurses don't handle. When LIFE Butler opened, Rodgers pointed out, they had just one part-time physician.

To enroll, one must be over 55 and have Medicare or Medicaid eligibility for nursing home-level care as decided by the Butler County Area Agency on Aging. The center also lets otherwise eligible folks pay if they're not Medicare or Medicaid eligible.

Their clients average age is 78.

Staff have assembled an endearing collection of stories in the last decade. Frailey said their in-home care staff had crate trained one of their client's dogs for her so they could get inside and provide their regular service unprovoked by ankle-biters.

“We don't walk away from anything,” Frailey said.

Ingrid Tallarico, a recreation therapy manager who started three months after the center opened in 2008, said they had just one or two clients visit each day when it was started. Today, they average about 60 visitors a day.

“Early on it was just about getting our name out there so people knew about us and what we do,” Tallarico said. “We grew slowly at first.”

But today, the organization's leaders are thinking they may need a second location in the future, according to Frailey.

The group is celebrating its 10th anniversary with a celebration from 2 to 5 p.m. Oct. 3. at the center, 231 W. Diamond Street.