Brykirk Extended Care Hospital

The curtains were hanging in shreds, and pools of urine had rotted out sections of the floor. The patients were suffering from oozing bedsores. In a fit of madness, one of them had attacked an aide with large hedge-trimming shears he kept under his mattress. "The place was a pit. It was a total nightmare," recalled Sheryl Brykman. That was 10 years ago, just before Brykman and her partner bought the 43-bed nursing home in Alhambra. Since then, they have turned it around.

The curtains were hanging in shreds, and pools of urine had rotted out sections of the floor. The patients were suffering from oozing bedsores. In a fit of madness, one of them had attacked an aide with large hedge-trimming shears he kept under his mattress. "The place was a pit. It was a total nightmare," recalled Sheryl Brykman. That was 10 years ago, just before Brykman and her partner bought the 43-bed nursing home in Alhambra. Since then, they have turned it around.

Residents of nursing homes for the elderly may be too easily stereotyped as passive recipients of care, unable to offer much in return. "A lot of times, people think that patients in nursing homes are just waiting for their tickets to be pulled by the Almighty," said Sheryl Brykman, administrator of the Brykirk Extended Care Hospital in Alhambra.

Since 1984, residents of the Brykirk Extended Care Hospital on Valley Boulevard have stopped going directly across the street to the bank or the mail box because there is no marked crosswalk for them to use. "We've had to keep a real watchful eye on our residents who go out, and they've had to walk to other intersections where there are crosswalks," said Sheryl Brykmam,director of the convalescent hospital.

"Here Lies John McRae; He died defending His Right-of-Way. " --Inscription on tombstone paperweight at Los Angeles Department of Transportation When city officials refused last June to repaint a crosswalk outside an Alhambra convalescent home for the elderly, the hospital's director was furious. "It's a total hazard," Cheryl Brykman, director of the Brykirk Extended Care Hospital, said of the unmarked intersection at the corner of Valley Boulevard and Primrose Avenue.