By Mary Sawyers
This story originally aired on Oregon Public Broadcasting
MILWAUKEE, OR 2006-07-24 Oatfield Estates resident Ray Croft and his racing partner, three-year-old Jacob Nickerson. Joseph Shapiro, NPR The older you are the more you likely think about where you're going to spend the last years of your life.

One Portland couple looked around for a while, but didn't find anything they liked, so they decided to build their own.

The result: Oatfield Estates, an assisted living community unlike any other in the country. Residents get the benefit of advanced technology, a family style atmosphere, and a natural setting -- which, as Mary Sawyers found when she visited, seems to be a winning combination.

Oatfield Estates in Milwaukee looks more like a well-manicured neighborhood than an assisted living community.

There's a koi pond with a water fountain, plenty of green space, walking paths, even an organic gardens.

Nancy Wolske: "...which encourage people to come out at all different levels, the way they want to, by either getting dirt under their fingernails and really pitching in or by just picking a fresh tomato, or watching someone else do all the work.

Public relations director Nancy Wolske is showing me around. She knows all 90 of the residents who live here, including Dorothy Kimmel.

Nancy Wolske: "How are you?"

Dorothy Kimmel: "Pretty Good."

Nancy Wolske: "Pretty Good?"

Dorothy Kimmel: "Yeah, hungry, hot and tired.(laughs)"

Nancy Wolske: "Looks like you've been working hard in the garden."

Dorothy Kimmel: "Yeah, we've been working out here a bit."

Nancy Wolske: "Looks beautiful.

As many as two-thirds of the residents suffer from memory problems -- some have Alzheimer's and dementia. There are some fences here to keep them from wandering away, but they're barely visible behind the thick shrubbery and natural barriers.

If Dorothy -- or another resident -- wanders down the driveway, a sprinkler is triggered, reminding her she should turn back.

But it's not just the outdoor environment that's unique, so are the living conditions inside. Each of the six family style houses is home to just 15 residents. All have private suites, heated tiles in the bathrooms, cable TV, a built-in computer, and a private chef.

Billy Reed: "I like to call it the summer camp for elders, where people can create relationships and develop friendships and learn and continue to have their sovereignty as much as possible.
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NPR's Joseph Shapiro also visited Oatfield Estates and filed this report for Morning Edition

Billy Reed, owner of Billy Reed's restaurant in Northeast Portland, co-owns Oatfield with his wife Lydia Lundberg.

The pair started the community eight years ago, billing it as an alternative to traditional assisted living. Here, as Lundberg explains, residents give up some of their privacy in order to have more freedom.

Lydia Lundberg: "As young persons we might find it invasive, but as you already experience a lot of losses, the technology can make it so that you don't have to be in a locked Alzheimer's unit, the technology can make it so you don't have to go to a nursing home -- and that's really the intent."

The technology Lundberg is talking about includes round-the-clock monitoring.

Residents wear black, triangular badges that look like something out of Star Trek. The badges communicate with wall and ceiling sensors to track the residents' whereabouts.

Dean Wilson: "The live view, right now her mom's in her room."

Gloria Wilson: "Um, hmm. She's sitting in her chair. And if mom was in bed it would show her snoring."

On this weekday evening, Gloria and Dean Wilson sit at their kitchen table in Clackamas and log on to Oatfield's family portal. They're checking up on Gloria's mother, 83-year old Doris Gately.

Dean Wilson: "At 4:50 she headed up to the kitchen, she arrived there at 4:52, and left there at 5:31, back downstairs and in her room at 5:52."

It's not that Gloria doesn't have time to visit her mom. In fact, she visits nearly every day, but Doris' memory is fading. On a recent visit she showed Gloria a new stuffed animal, but needed some help remembering how she got it.

Gloria Wilson: "What did you get that from mom?"

Doris Gately: "Hmm?"

Gloria Wilson: "What did you get that from?"

Doris Gately: "Well, we have these animals. We had a meeting."

Gloria Wilson: "At Bingo?"

Doris Gately: "At Bingo, yes. And then you can get these animals for nothing."

Gloria Wilson: "Right, when you're done you get to pick an animal."

Doris Gately: "Yeah, you get to pick what you want."

Gloria Wilson: "Yeah."

So Wilson says the only way to know for sure what her mom has been up to is to check the family portal.

Gloria Wilson: "Basically, it's just once again showing us, you know that she's safe there and that's really what we've gotten from this, we can leave there and know mom's fine and that's the best part about it. And if you get up in the middle of the night and think 'Oh, I just want to check and make sure she's OK' you can do it without making a phone call."

Residents must give their permission for family members to use the portal, but they can also revoke that permission.

Ray Croft kicked his daughter off the system after she told him he was gaining too much weight.

Ray Croft: "Unfortunately it got to the point where I asked that she be cut off from that system because it was upsetting me too much and her too much about what I should be expected to do."

Croft has diabetes and an amputated leg, so he gets around in a motorized wheelchair.

Despite the disagreement with his daughter, he says generally he doesn't mind being monitored -- even in the middle of the night.

Ray Croft: "At the bottom of all my bedposts are some aluminum gizmos and some flat plates, black, well the pressure of the bed rest on that, so literally it can tell whether you've rolled over on the bed, if you're restless at night, if you're out of your bed or into your bed and also what you weigh."

Residents can remove their badges if they want more privacy -- but that hardly ever happens, says co-owner Linda Lundberg, because most residents want family members to know they're being cared for.

Lydia Lundberg: "It's extremely empowering because there's a measure of quality control, the family member knows how quickly we're responding to assistance calls, the family member knows how many assistance calls there are, you know they know where their family member is spending their time."

Of course, all this technology and Oatfield's other perks don't come cheaply. On average residents pay $4400 a month.

Gloria Wilson says she did find cheaper places for her mother to live, but no place better.

Gloria Wilson: "Everybody cares about everybody there, everybody watches out for each other, it's just a great place."

Oatfield has licensed its technology to a couple of other assisted living facilities -- one in Dallas, Oregon another in Troy, New York. And owners Linda Lundberg and her husband Billy Reed plan to open another Oatfield-like community in Tigard early next year.