At Grace Gardens Living, our mission is to create a true home where every resident is known, valued, loved, and treated with dignity. We provide compassionate, relationship-centered care by honoring each person’s unique story, choices, and individuality. Through meaningful relationships, joyful experiences, exceptional service, and a commitment to excellence, we strive to bring purpose, comfort, connection, and joy to every day.
We recognize that caring for someone’s loved one is both a tremendous privilege and responsibility. We honor that trust by leading with integrity, humility, and accountability continually reflecting, learning, and striving to do better. At Grace Gardens, we don’t simply care for residents; we welcome them into a community where they belong, where life continues to have meaning, and where they can truly feel at home.
Welcome home. Here, we are family.
It is a privilege to step into such a wonderful community. My name is Julia Schmidt, and I hope to get to know each of you and thought an introduction is in order.
How I arrived here: I began my healthcare career as a registered nurse and spent six years serving patients in the intensive care unit and hospice. I now work in Anesthesia as a CRNA. During those hospice years, I fell in love with the elderly population and often felt that I was caring for angels. That experience planted a dream in my heart: to own a home where older adults could step away from the feel of a large, institutional facility and instead be truly known and treated with dignity. I looked for a home for two years, and then I found Maple Cottage. It was the perfect blend of location, small town feel, size and heart I was looking for.
Who am I: I am a person of faith, a wife, and a mother. I married my dear husband when I was 20 years old, and together we are raising our daughters, Grace, age 13, and Zoey Joy, age 2. My family is at the heart of who I am and why this work matters so deeply to me.
My husband is from Louisville, Kentucky, and we love returning to this part of the country to spend time with our children’s grandparents. Although we live in California, this region is also home to us. I plan to travel here once a month and make Grace Gardens a family affair. I want my daughters to grow up seeing that a life well lived is a life of service.
At Grace Gardens, my vision is for every resident to be known personally and honored for the life they have lived. Their stories, traditions, favorite foods, music, routines, beliefs, and relationships matter. Care should go beyond meeting physical needs; it should create comfort, belonging, purpose, joy, and meaningful connection. It is a privilege to serve residents and their families during one of life’s most vulnerable and important seasons.
I am grateful to inherit an amazing foundation. My goal is to build upon it with humility, compassion, and excellence strengthening Grace Gardens as a warm, home-like community where residents are valued and loved, families feel supported and reassured, and employees are proud to work. I want Grace Gardens to be a place filled with trust, kindness, laughter, purpose, and genuine joy.
We believe excellence begins with taking ownership. Every member of the Grace Gardens team accepts personal responsibility for their actions, decisions, and the quality of care we provide. We do not place blame or make excuses. Instead, we approach challenges with humility, integrity, and a commitment to learning.
We practice self-reflection by regularly asking ourselves how we can better serve our residents, support one another, and improve our processes. We welcome constructive feedback, learn from our mistakes, and continually strive for personal and professional growth.
Our residents and their families place tremendous trust in us, and we honor that trust by being accountable, transparent, dependable, and committed to doing the right thing, even when it is difficult. We believe that a culture of ownership creates a culture of excellence, where every team member is empowered to solve problems, serve others well, and continuously raise the standard of care.
