Regency to share 25th anniversary with community

For 25 years, Regency on Whidbey has succeeded by maintaining strong ties to the community

From 4-7 p.m. on July 17, the senior living community is hosting an open house with food, drinks and casual entertainment to celebrate the milestone with the city.

Currently home to 137 residents, the Regency’s Oak Harbor location comprises a memory care building, an assisted living building and 29 independent cottages across its seven-and-a-half acre property. It is part of the larger Regency Pacific Management, which owns 38 communities involving over 4,000 employees across Washington, Oregon, California and Hawaii.

With its collectivist priorities and humanized approach to long-term care, however, Regency on Whidbey feels rather mom-and-pop — all according to Wilma Jo Flaherty’s plan for the senior living community when she took over as executive director nearly 13 years ago.

Flaherty worked for a similar company in La Conner, making for a 35-year career in the industry today, before assuming her present role. Given her unfamiliarity with Whidbey Island and Regency Pacific Management, she initially hesitated to take the job. Now, typically averaging 135 residents and frequently sponsoring community events, like last weekend’s Fourth of July celebrations thrown by the Oak Harbor Chamber of Commerce, the Regency has become a fixture in Oak Harbor.

“We are really the community that people would like to live in,” Flaherty said. “We did attain (that reputation) through our own hard work.”

Having the same faces greet residents year after year — the sense of familiarity — is part of what makes the senior living community so appealing to those in need of long-term care.

Long tenures are uncommon in the long-term care industry, Flaherty explained, but not at the Regency. Many of their employees have worked there over five years; several upwards of 10. Teri Mendiola, the community relations director, is approaching nine years at the senior living community herself.

That is the product of a workplace culture of commitment and community that outlasted even the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit the Regency especially hard, according to the staff members. Many residents were afflicted with the disease — some never fully recovered — as quarantining within each building was difficult. Staff, dressed head-to-toe in PPE, worked long hours.

Flaherty admits the pandemic forced those in the industry to ask themselves hard questions.

“The one thing COVID did was it really made people take a look at, ‘Is this what I really want to do? Could I really go through this again?’ And I think a lot of people said no,” Flaherty explained.

The Regency retained much of its staff anyway.

Hardship also demonstrated the Regency’s care for the community is reciprocated. During the pandemic, people brought lunch for staff and offered to help out around the property.

Over 100 guests have RSVP’d to the event already, and the Regency hopes even more will roll in.

“It’s more for their community, because of their support, and more of a thank you to former families, former residents, former staff and the community itself,” Mendiola said. “It’s just wonderful how we have connected to our local community.”