By Natalie Skowlund
Three times a week, Armando Guardiola wakes in the bleary morning hours and pulls on his clothes. The retired railroad worker traipses around his yellow ranch-style home in Commerce City making last-minute preparations before a public shuttle arrives.
He’s heading to an early shift, and he can’t be late — his life depends on it.
By 7:30 a.m., Guardiola is at a kidney dialysis clinic in Westminster. The 71-year-old spends hours at a time here, in a room where close to 20 strangers sit in sterile recliners, hooked up to softly-whirring machines that filter their blood through tubes. Some patients doze off, but Guardiola prefers to flick on the television at his station and watch the news.
Guardiola longs more than anything to get out for a walk near his home in Commerce City, or to take a swim in the local pool, but exhaustion from dialysis and severe joint pain makes it nearly impossible.
“These days, I can’t do anything,” Guardiola said. “It’s sad, this dolorcíto. I don’t want to give up hope just because it’s gotten worse.”
This – the sitting, the waiting, the medical poking and prodding, and the longing – is his life now. And he’s not the only one.
Colorado is aging, and that brings issues
Colorado has one of the fastest growing populations over age 65. Older adults in the U.S. face high rates of social isolation and loneliness. Latino elders like Guardiola may be even more likely to experience social isolation, according to a 2023 study in the Annual Review of Sociology.
But despite his limitations, Guardiola finds a good reason to get out the door a few times each month. On a brisk Tuesday morning, he arrives at the Villages at Gateway Apartments community center in Denver’s Montbello neighborhood, ready to seize the day.
He’s one of hundreds of regular attendees at Conectoras de Montbello, a Spanish-language program started in 2016 with a mission to connect Latino old people to local resources – and to each other.
Today is game day with a Mexican twist: Lotería. The colorful boards and competitive energy in the room take Guardiola back to his youth spent between El Paso, Texas, and Juárez, Mexico.
“I’d see Lotería all the time,” he said. “I’d play it all the time as a boy.”
Conectoras hosts regional crafts, cafecíto coffee hours and other Latin American cultural activities several times monthly. But participants also return for everything from mental health services to boxes of fresh produce.
For participants like 66-year-old Lourdes Alvarado, visiting Conectoras is an opportunity to escape the daily stresses of home life and her loneliness after the death of her husband.
“I come to clear my mind – of many things, if I’m being honest,” she said in Spanish.
A decade of growth
Conectoras started out as a pilot program of Latino Age Wave Colorado, launching a decade ago with around 100 participants. The initiative, located in a majority Latino neighborhood, has since blossomed into a wraparound social group and resource center serving hundreds of families.
Conectoras leader Aurelio Avalos said their success is largely due to the trust they’ve built among local elders.
“Gaining the trust of an older adult isn’t easy,” Avalos said in Spanish. “Everything we’ve achieved has resulted organically from them recommending us to more and more families.”
Jazmín Muro, director of research at the Colorado Latino Leadership, Advocacy & Research Organization, leads a research team focused on the efficacy of social groups like Conectoras. She said elderly Latinos face unique challenges as they age.
For one, Latinos often prioritize family, according to Muro, sometimes at the cost of developing close friendships. Even those who live in multigenerational households may find themselves alone much of the time while other family members are busy at work or school. Some, like Lourdes Alvarado, also care for others, even into old age.
“I’ll get back to my apartment, and I have to do everything that corresponds with it: cook, clean, take care of the kid when he gets back from school,” Alvarado said in Spanish of her responsibilities at the home she shares with her daughter and 11-year-old grandson. “That’s my daily life, because my daughter works.”
Then there are the disparities. Latino seniors suffer from chronic health conditions like diabetes and dementia at higher rates than white people. In Denver, they are about three times as likely to live in poverty. But moments of social connection can change the course of a life, Muro said.
“Social isolation and mental health conditions, but especially social isolation, are like fertilizer for diseases and chronic conditions that you might have,” Muro said.
Fighting the challenges of sprawl
In a spread-out city like Denver, merging everything under the same roof has big benefits for older adults, who may not have cars or easy access to transit.
“It's not like we have these plazas where everyone gathers,” Muro said.
Conectoras has grown quickly over the years, at times straining the program’s budget. Nearly 10 years in, the group still meets at a Montbello apartment complex where they’ve been permitted to host events in the community space at no extra cost.
Now, with the uncertainty around funding for diversity initiatives both locally and nationally following the inauguration of President Donald Trump, leaders have been left wondering about the program’s future.
Funding from the Caring for Denver Foundation, which in 2023 provided nearly $130,000 in financial support for Conectoras’ free mental health services, has been reduced by about $23,000 annually for both 2024 and 2025.
Caring for Denver Foundation Executive Director Lorez Meinhold said the reduction reflects the level of support Conectoras requested for mental health services in their latest grant application. She also noted Caring for Denver received about $2 million less in Denver city tax revenue in 2024 than anticipated, and received far more requests for funding than could be met.
The Conectoras team is also in conversation with another national aging-focused foundation, Next50, to find out whether they’ll remain eligible for future funding. In 2023, Next50 gave Conectoras $50,000 for “general support,” according to tax records.
“We certainly can’t say that nothing’s going to happen,” Avalos said. “We’ve been working 10 years to get here. To end like this, all of a sudden, it makes us sad. Mostly because there are so many [elderly] who are all alone.”
Conectoras’ leaders don’t plan to reduce services yet. Instead, Avalos said he and his co-leader will take cuts to their salaries.
Win or lose
Back at the community center in Montbello, it’s time to play Lotería. Armando Guardiola sits at a long table beside other old folks, his senses carefully attuned to the front of the room where a caller slides cards from the deck one at a time, holding them up to the crowd to announce their Spanish names.
“La rana…
El sol…
…La calavera.”
Tension fills the air as players stare intently at their game boards, ready to move marbles onto the colorful illustrated squares as soon as the right word is called. Whispers build gradually into excited chatter after the first win.
Guardiola doesn’t mind if he wins or loses. All of this – being together, and having some fun – is reason enough to get out of bed each day.
“It makes me feel good, even though I’m not doing too well,” Guardiola said. “Because I see other people enjoying themselves.”
This story was published with the assistance of the Journalism & Women Symposium (JAWS) Health Journalism Fellowship, supported by The Commonwealth Fund.
