Welcome to Aspen Creek and Cottonwood Creek: an innovative assisted living community specializing in personalized memory care. Our homes are not your run-of-the-mill dementia care facilities. At Aspen Creek and Cottonwood Creek, we take a small house approach to memory care and assisted living. Our certified nurses are passionate about providing personalized care and friendly treatments to our residents at all hours of the day. We came from humble beginnings to found Aspen Creek and then Cottonwood Creek with an ultimate goal of creating loving, nurturing, and supportive communities for those suffering from dementia. Our work isn’t always easy, but we know that it is always worth it.
Our Story
The founding of our memory care and assisted living residences comes with a heart-warming family-centered tale. Aspen Creek was originally founded by our President, Teresa Crawford, and her husband, Brian. Their decision to establish our amazing dementia care facilities was spurred by Teresa’s upbringing and her close personal relationship with her grandmother, Madge.
Grandma Madge was nothing short of an amazing inspiration. Madge was a strong, patient, and hardworking Christian farm wife. She was always a loving mother, a caring grandmother, and a thoughtful person. Madge was basically kindness incarnate. For us, Madge was really the embodiment of pure love and generosity. Teresa became very close with her grandmother as she grew up and Madge continued to mold Teresa’s life throughout the years. As her grandmother began to pass away, Teresa became inspired by Madge and her teachings to pursue a career in healthcare where Teresa could work specifically with seniors.
Teresa started working in senior living immediately following her college graduation with a degree in Health Services Administration in 1992. Driven by her care for others, Teresa pursued a variety of positions in the healthcare industry. She eventually climbed the corporate ladder high enough to become the Vice President of Operations for a mid-sized non-profit company in Illinois.
Teresa had become a great success within the Illinois healthcare industry, but she eventually realized that she disliked her position. In her corporate role, Teresa was no longer taking care of individual people; instead, she was just taking care of numbers. In this corporate world of healthcare, Teresa realized that far too many individuals get lost in the shuffle of paperwork and those persons become just another number on a high-level spreadsheet. Teresa missed those face-to-face interactions and she reflected back on why she pursued a career in healthcare in the first place: her grandmother.
Inspired by her memories of her grandma and her passion for helping others, Teresa started drafting her own business plan for Aspen Creeks in the evenings and on the weekends. She eventually resigned from her corporate position in 2009 and, later that same year, Teresa founded the Aspen Creek of Sullivan, IL with the help of her husband Brian. That day marked the culmination of Teresa’s life experiences and it was the realization of her life-long dream to care for seniors.
Not a single day goes by without us thinking about Madge and her amazing personality. Her legacy continues to inspire use and we continue to instill the same compassionate qualities that Madge lived by in our memory care and assisted living homes on a daily basis.
Our Guiding Philosophy
At each of our dementia care facilities, we guide our daily operations with a simple philosophy: If a person wouldn’t have something in their own home, then we won’t have it in their home with us. In each of our residences, you won’t see flickering lights in the hallways and you won’t hear inane buzzers going off round the clock. We aren’t a retirement facility or an institution, Aspen Creek and Cottonwood Creek are first and foremost a home.
At each location, you’ll see a beautiful home, you’ll witness laughter and friendly conversations between residents and nurses, and you’ll smell delicious home cooked meals. Our communities have been specifically designed to mimic a cozy, quaint, and quiet home.
In our approach to memory care, we center everything around the individuals in our homes. Our residents are different from one another in many ways, so we accommodate their preferences and let the residents guide us. At every Creeks location, our staff members main job is to be “yes” people. We will work tirelessly to find ways to make our residents and their families happy, by saying “yes” to every reasonable request. So far, this caring mindset has been very successful.
Aspen Creek and Cottonwood Creek Communities
We may have 3 locations, but Aspen Creek is a very small company. And we like it that way. For us, our small size is a big part of our identity and we embrace wholeheartedly. The unique size of our residences helps us cultivate a close-knit community within our walls. Our staff members focus on strengthening the relationships we develop with every resident on a daily basis. For each resident, we prioritize comfort, care, and personalization at every turn. This means your loved one gets the care and attention that they deserve every day.
We refer to two of our residences as “Aspen Creeks" for a significant reason. We like to compare our communities to the humble nature of the aspen tree. While each aspen tree in a single group is unique, they are not just individual trees. In fact, aspens are vastly interconnected beneath the surface via a large root system. Together these colonies of trees form the largest living organisms on earth.
For that reason, we feel that the aspen tree symbolically represents how we all depend on another in our communities. Not only do our residents need us, we need them as well. It’s a nurturing and caring relationship that we aim to instill in our day-to-day operations. We’re a loving, warm, and supportive community of friends that work together every day.
See Our Memory Care Homes In-Person
While she isn’t around to see our memory care homes today, we know that Madge would be proud of our work. We’ve put in the hours to make our dementia care facilities feel just like a loving and caring home. Our nurses promise to always treat your loved one with the utmost respect and we will strive to develop a strong bond with them as well. We aim to deliver the kind of care that your loved one deserves on a daily basis and we know they’ll feel comfortable in their new community.
Schedule a tour at one of our memory care and assisted living homes today to see our personalized approach first-hand.