About us

The word we were named for.

Chajinel comes from the Mayan Quiché and means Guardian and Caregiver of the Soul. We chose it because it names exactly what we set out to do in 2014: to bring the word care back to home care.

Chajinel is a non-medical home-care agency serving families across the San Francisco Bay Area — San Mateo, San Francisco, Marin, and Santa Clara counties — and one of the very few certified minority-owned home-care agencies in San Mateo County. We were founded to carry forward something our ancient cultures understood and our modern world too often forgets — the reverence owed to our elders. We believe care is the medicine that betters the journey of our elders, and of the generations still to come.

Why we exist

Our mission & vision.

Our mission

To accompany aging adults with conscious, integrative care that honors all five dimensions of the human being — physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, and social — so that no part of a person goes unattended, and no season of life is met without dignity.

Our vision

To return the aging adult to their rightful place — not set aside, but sought out — where wisdom and lived experience are received as the legacy they are, and growing older is honored as a passage rather than managed as a decline.

What we stand for

Our values

Five commitments that shape every visit, every decision, and every relationship we hold.

Reciprocity

Care is never a one-way street. What we give to our elders returns to us all — and shapes the world we ourselves will grow old in.

Empathy

We meet each person inside their own story. Before we offer care, we take time to understand a life — its history, its losses, and what still gives it meaning.

Responsibility

Our word is a covenant. When a family entrusts us with someone they love, we hold that trust as sacred and follow through — with presence and skill.

Honesty

We tell the truth with tenderness. Families deserve clarity about what care can do, what it costs, and what lies ahead — so they choose from understanding, not fear.

Respect

Every elder remains a whole person, with authority and dignity intact. We protect their autonomy and their right to be seen, heard, and honored.

Daniela Jonguitud, founder of Chajinel
The founder
Twelve years on the Path of the Jaguar.
Daniela Jonguitud

Reflecting on the journey, it feels like just yesterday. The late nights spent absorbing laws and regulations, mastering payroll, Excel, and even physical labor — painting walls, moving furniture. Balancing a full-time role as a tissue recovery technician while launching a company. Navigating single motherhood to a ten-year-old, driving a car as old as I was, and living in survival mode. Enduring rejection, dismissal, and being underestimated. Juggling caregiving and administration, once pushing to a personal best of 53 consecutive hours worked.

Through countless experiences — a pandemic, legal challenges — I stand resilient. This path has been a profound lesson in transformation. A quote once resonated with me: “Entrepreneurship is a spiritual path.” A raw and enlightening journey that shaped me both professionally and emotionally, molding me into a compassionate servant and a dedicated leader of a team that serves elders from a place of empathy.

Chajinel — guardian of the soul in the Mayan Quiché — stands as a significant mentor in my life, alongside every patient and every team member. Each encounter has offered a lesson or a blessing that contributed to my growth. In ancient wisdom, this spiritual awakening is called the Path of the Jaguar — where solitude becomes a companion and perseverance prevails even in moments of doubt. Not so different from entrepreneurship.

Today, Chajinel and GereOM have reached remarkable milestones — pioneering, minority- and women-owned, and rooted in a workforce that is 98% Latino and 85% female. This success has allowed me to support fellow single mothers and uplift my community, fostering reciprocity in my homeland while upholding integrity.

Amidst it all, what endures is the person we have become — the ability to rest at night in gratitude, knowing we gave our all. That unwavering commitment, I deeply believe, should be the measure of success.

I can barely remember the Daniela who arrived in America at eighteen. The transformation continues, and I am yet to be amazed by what is to come, and by the person I will become as I keep walking the Path of the Jaguar.

More than a business, Chajinel is the embodiment of the immigrant dream. Let us always lift each other up — with respect, and with reciprocity for one another’s paths and challenges.

In deep gratitude,
A Latino immigrant who dared to dream.

Recognized by our community

Twelve years, honored.

The Chajinel team celebrating its anniversary Daniela receiving a proclamation California Senate and Assembly certificates
Our journey

One promise, kept — across two countries and more than a decade.

Before there was a method or a platform, there was a calling — carried one family at a time.

Where it began

Chajinel

2014 · San Francisco Bay Area

It started with a word. Chajinel — Mayan Quiché for Guardian of the Soul — became a home-care agency built on a quiet conviction: that our elders deserve to be met with reverence, not merely managed. What began as one caregiver’s calling grew into something a whole community came to rely on.

  • Preferred provider for Veterans Affairs
  • Partner to the San Mateo County Area Agency on Aging
  • Contracts with 25+ long-term-care insurers
  • Minority-owned and certified; hundreds of jobs created
  • Among the first to bring Aging Life Care to Latin Americaconfirm claim
2014
2023
The method takes shape

GereOM

2023 · Northern Mexico

Reciprocity has always been the heart of this story — and in 2023 it took our founder home. GereOM began as a non-profit geriatric day club, a place where aging is met with presence instead of decline. There, the GereOM Method was born — the tools that now enrich Chajinel’s care, turning “care” into something a person can feel.

  • BAPNE — rhythm and movement for body and mind
  • Chair Yoga — gentle strength and breath
  • Plastic Arts — creativity that reconnects
  • Conscious Nutrition — nourishment as care
  • Reminiscence Therapy — life story as medicine
  • Virtual Reality & Exhibitions — the world opened back up
Care knowledge, in every family’s hands

The Platform

2026 · GereOM

The lesson of a decade is simple: families meet the system in crisis, when they should have met it in preparation. The platform exists to change where you begin. The mission now moves through three lines of service — Private Care, the Geriatric Clubs, and the Platform.

  • For families & employees — a whole-person view, daily protocols, and micro-goals that make progress feel possible
  • For caregivers — training and certification in symbiotic care
2026
The Dream of Reciprocity

One soul, two hands, one shared future.

In the United States, Chajinel brings conscious care to Bay Area families. In Mexico, our sister organization GereOM carries the same belief home. Two countries, one conviction: that care, freely given, returns to us all.

Discover GereOM