The newly renovated Lani Ward Booth Hall ceremonially opened yesterday, although the 15 residents of the skilled-nursing facility were enjoying the amenities last week.

"This is a nurse's dream!" declared administrator Darlene Nakayama as she conducted a preview tour of the spacious shower facilities in the adult day-care center downstairs, a program licensed to serve up to 30 more elders.

Outside the sunny activities room on the lanai, work crews were figuring out where to install the planter boxes in which people could garden and making other final touches.

"Residents will be able to get into the soil," said Leigh-wai Doo, an attorney and former City Council member who has been active with the home since 1996, and three years ago became its chief executive officer. Doo, a grandson of one of the home's original founders, also is watching a new mini-botanical garden featuring ti-leaf varieties begin to take root.

Known as HiNOA, the program is basically a referral service to advise frail elders still living in their own homes and their adult children who invariably need support, said Anne Chipchase, who coordinates the program.

"I tell people, I'm a nice old lady who's been there," said Chipchase, who tended to her parents and their ordeals with Alzheimer's and debilitating injuries before they died. "It's like having a neighbor you can talk to.

"We want to help them see that there's help, there's hope; there's potential for living through this."

HiNOA is far from the first referral agency of its kind, she said. Various city and state offices also fulfill that function but Chipchase believes there's room for one in every neighborhood. The callers being served represent a segment of the aging population, she said.

"We want to concentrate expertise in this neighborhood" — Palolo has a high percentage of senior citizens — "because the dream is that every neighborhood would have a HiNOA," she said.

Palolo Chinese Home was founded on the dream of 326 Chinese immigrants who chipped in for the care of their needy elders. It has never served an exclusively Chinese clientele, Doo said, though its heritage can be found in the 40 percent of the residents who are Chinese.

There's another cultural holdover in its kitchen, which will undergo its own facelift before the first phase of upgrades are finally complete in 2006.

"We're using these small ovens, but we have three huge woks," said Nakayama with a laugh.

All the improvements at the home, which continues to receive financial support from Chinese societies as well as other community organizations and government grants, represents a continuing legacy of care, said Wes Fong, who is chairman of the home's executive committee.

"I cannot think of a greater gift to leave for our elders than a new home where they can enjoy the rest of the golden years of their lives," he said at yesterday's ceremony.