Oakland ~ Catherine Blakely has a choice: Should she go with the Wild Lilac or the Violet Aluminum for her manicure?

"Well, this one's awfully pretty," she said, admiring the latter. "But I like (the Lilac), because it isn't too flashy, and I don't like flashy."

Blakely, 94, needed to choose wisely, because Saturday was her only chance to get her nails done this month. Blakely is a resident at Oakland's Salem Lutheran Home, and last weekend was the monthly Pampering Salem Senior Sweethearts day, when volunteers go to the home to share soft drinks and cookies, chat, give residents' hands the royal treatment, and sometimes put on a little makeup, too.

The seniors need the personal interaction of talking to the volunteers, said Beth Meyer, executive director of Hands on Bay Area (formerly Community Impact), the program that organizes the Senior Sweethearts project. But what makes the manicure project special is the physical contact that painting someone's nails involves, she said.

"That human touch element is really important, I think," Meyer said. "For them to actually be pampered like that, to have someone there just doing their nails, really paying attention to them creates this intimate yet fun setting."

The volunteers return to the home the first Saturday of every month, for about two or three hours, and work one on one with only a few seniors during that time, to keep the experience personal, Meyer said.

It's a very different volunteer experience from most others, says Lavanya Sunkara, 24, whose last volunteer post was working with homeless young people.

Many of the senior citizens have some form of dementia, so achieving interaction is often a struggle, she says. But even if the seniors, most of them in their 80s and 90s, aren't always responsive in conversation, they are always happy to have someone to interact with them, she says.

"It's good for their self-esteem, and they look good," Sunkara says. "It's the least I can do to make them smile and look nice."

For more information on volunteering for the Pampering Salem Senior Sweethearts project, call Hands on Bay Area at (650) 965-0242. The group offers volunteer activities that can be done in a day. Many of its members were volunteers for the now-defunct Oakland Cares group.