My 20-Year Safari with Dad’s Alzheimer’s  

 Lori La Bey talks with Steve Kosareff, a Los Angeles-based author and a passionate advocate for Alzheimer’s awareness and caregiver support. For twenty years, Steve and his family navigated the complex, emotional, and exhausting terrain of caring for his father, John, who lived with a rare, long-term form of Alzheimer’s disease. This deep personal experience inspired his newly released memoir, Something Like That: My 20-Year Safari with Dad’s Alzheimer’s, available on Amazon at https://a.co/d/0gDMLXJD.

Drawing from two decades of firsthand observation, Steve writes with a unique blend of raw honesty, practical insight, and healing humor. His mission is to break the isolation felt by millions of unpaid family caregivers and provide a voice for those facing the prolonged realities of dementia. As a local speaker and media guest, Steve offers families actionable advice on pacing themselves for the caregiving marathon, protecting their own mental health, and finding unexpected moments of joy amid crisis.

Book Summary

Big-rig truck driver John Kosareff began misplacing his keys in 1997. He soon graduated to making dangerous turns with the family car into oncoming traffic and getting lost in a mental fog, driving miles from home. Before long, he no longer recognized Susan, the wife he loved for fifty years, who was abruptly woken one morning by John choking her. Despite the threat to her life, Susan continued to care for John at their home. She also refused to acknowledge her husband’s Alzheimer’s and failed to address her own well-being. Instead, twelve years after John’s disease began and due to the stress of being her husband’s caregiver, Susan’s life came to an abrupt end when she suffered a massive heart attack. The responsibility of taking care of John, Susan’s death and funeral, and all the attendant financial affairs that followed would now be up to their children. Were they up to the challenge?

Author Steve Kosareff (Satin Pumps: The Moonlit Murder That Mesmerized The Nation) recalls the tragic, and even at times, humorous, story of his father’s twenty years with the rare long-term disease as he navigates the Alzheimer’s care maze. Kosareff moves back and forth in time over six decades as his family lived in their home, as he revisits the chain of events his father’s Alzheimer’s set in motion and how he and his sisters responded.

Something Like That is both a cautionary tale from an Alzheimer’s caregiver and a personal account of the emotional, financial, and physical toll the disease took on the author’s family.

Learn:

• How many families are navigating a Long-Term Diagnosis.
• The realities of dementia care.
• The cost of caregiving.
• Learn about some of the unforeseen events that drain caregivers.
• Finding joy in crisis.
• Why getting legal paperwork in order is critical.

Alzheimer’s Speaks Blog Post

https://alzheimersspeaks.com/my-20-year-safari-with-dads-alzheimers/

Watch the Video Interview Below

https://youtu.be/aJSfn36GSrw?si=RtYTnsVkCi2GpwWA

Listen and Subscribe to Alzheimer’s Speaks Podcast on Apple 

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-20-year-safari-with-dads-alzheimers/id986940432?i=1000783968303

Listen and Subscribe to the Alzheimer’s Speaks Podcast on Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/episode/7eKSIHjYexVAscVAs4UQZG

Other Podcasts

https://pod.link/986940432

Dementia Map

https://dementiamap.com/events/#!event/2026/8/11/my-20-year-safari-with-dad-8217-s-alzheimer-8217-s

Contact Steve Kosareff

Purchase The Book  SOMETHING LIKE THAT on Amazon

https://a.co/d/0gDMLXJD  

On Amazon, listeners can also find a story summary there; read the first nine chapters for free; purchase and post reviews (which I encourage as long as they are constructive and help other Alzheimer’s families find the book). If they click on my photo or name below the story summary, it will take them to an author bio and links to my three previously published books and the foreign language editions.

All of Steve’s books on Amazon

https://tinyurl.com/4nh2xs3e

• WINDOW TO THE FUTURE: THE GOLDEN AGE OF TELEVISION MARKETING AND ADVERTISING;
• SATIN PUMPS: THE MOONLIGHT MURDER THAT MESMERIZED THE NATION;
• THE GLASS EYE INVASION: TELEVISION SETS INVADE THE MIDCENTURY HOME; and

foreign language editions (Spanish and French) of SOMETHING LIKE THAT available only on Amazon under their translated titles ALGO ASI (Spanish) https://a.co/d/0cYYuTp5 and QUELQUE CHOSE COMME ÇA (French) https://a.co/d/05MHQRuV

Email

Facebook 

https://www.facebook.com/steve.kosareff

Mail Steve Kosareff

c/o Glass Eye Publications, 2425 Third Street, Unit #L, Santa Monica, CA 90405.

Contact Lori La Bey of Alzheimer’s Speaks

Contact Lori La Bey with questions or branding needs at https://www.alzheimersspeaks.com

Alzheimer's Speaks shifts dementia care from crisis to comfort around the world, one episode at a time, by raising all voices and delivering sound news, not just sound bites, since 2011.

Alzheimer's Speaks is part of the Senior Resource Podcast Network.