In-Home Care for Ponte Vedra Beach, Sawgrass and Palm Valley

Hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30, and the coast of 32082 has the record to show for it. When Hurricane Matthew passed offshore in 2016, the National Hurricane Center found that its surge pushed the Ponte Vedra Beach dune line back 30 to 40 feet and carved cliffs 12 to 16 feet high. In November 2022, St. Johns County records, Hurricane Nicole washed out A1A in South Ponte Vedra Beach and stranded residents who tried to evacuate. The county’s evacuation routes depend on where the house is: from Ponte Vedra Beach and Sawgrass, north on A1A and west on J. Turner Butler Boulevard to I-95; from the coast north of the Guana Dam, north on A1A and west over the Palm Valley Bridge on County Road 210; south of the dam, south on A1A and west over the Vilano Bridge. Zones are assigned address by address, so look up your parent’s on the county’s evacuation information page rather than going by the neighborhood.

Anyone who relies on oxygen or electrically powered medical equipment can pre-register for the county’s Special Medical Needs Shelter, online or at (904) 824-5550, but it has firm limits. It cannot support hospital beds, dialysis, ventilators, tracheostomies or Hoyer lifts, a caregiver has to come along, and shelter staff give no one-on-one care. Signing up for the state’s Special Needs Registry does not guarantee a shelter space either. All of that argues for settling the plan in June, not when a storm appears in the forecast. With live-in care, someone is already in the house when a watch is posted, gathering medications, chargers and paperwork, keeping meals and routines steady, and making it possible to leave early rather than at the last minute. For families who live out of town, extra hourly care shifts before and after a storm mean someone checks that the refrigerator is cold, the medications are dry and your parent is eating.

THE PLAYERS Championship comes to TPC Sawgrass every March, with four tournament rounds on THE PLAYERS Stadium Course. WJCT has reported that the tournament draws more than 150,000 fans, citing the Florida Department of Transportation, that A1A is heaviest from about 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., and that organizers point drivers to County Road 210 and Nocatee Parkway. For a parent who lives near Sawgrass, that means slow roads to every appointment and a caregiver who needs extra time to arrive. That week we schedule shift changes and doctor drives around the late-morning crush, and for someone with memory loss who is unsettled by crowds and noise, we keep the day at home as close to normal as we can.

The rest of the year, two Council on Aging programs sit right in 32082. THE PLAYERS Community Senior Center, run by the St. Johns County Council on Aging at 175 Landrum Lane, is open Tuesday through Friday with lunch, chair exercise, Tai Chi, bridge, bingo and a putting green, and it takes transportation requests. The Council’s Ponte Vedra Memory Care Center, at 1048 A1A North, runs its IMEP memory program in three- and five-hour sessions, the longer one with lunch. Getting a parent to either on a steady weekly rhythm is what companion care is for, and on the days in between, Alzheimer’s and dementia care at home keeps the same routines going. Vicar’s Landing, on Vicar’s Landing Way, offers independent living, assisted living, nursing care and memory care, and its nursing home holds the state’s Gold Seal, Florida’s top quality award for nursing homes, for 2024 through 2026; care at home can carry a family through the months of deciding whether a move like that is right. For Nocatee, inland between the Intracoastal and US 1, see home care in Nocatee and Ponte Vedra 32081, or find every town and ZIP code we serve on our Ponte Vedra service areas page.