The signs were subtle, at first.

Raul Rojas would be late on a bill, or he would take a wrong turn when driving.

Then he started paying the bills twice, sometimes in triplicate. The little things began adding up, and soon it was clear that Rojas, 78, was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, says his daughter, Christy, 28.

The hardest part, she says, is the role reversal, where the daughter now takes care of the father.

“Growing up, I was very spoiled by both my parents,” says the Portage Park resident. “Now, I’m the one who’s taking care of him and spoiling him.”

Hispanics are more likely to experience dementia years earlier than people of European descent. Nearly 140,000 Hispanics in the Chicagoland area have Alzheimer’s, and many live in households without a readily identifiable caretaker.

Armed with those statistics, Constantina Mizis is leading a local effort to help Hispanic families cope with Alzheimer’s.

When her organization, the Latino Alzheimer’s & Memory Disorders Alliance (LAMDA), launched earlier this month, it immediately became of beacon of hope for caregivers.

“They give us information, (telling us) what resources and what help is out there, because you don’t know where to go,” says Martha Arroyo, 29, who helps care for her 69-year-old father, Jose. “We weren’t familiar with this kind of disease. Especially for Latinos, a lot of people who don’t speak English, they don’t know where to go or who to ask for help.”

LAMDA, Arroyo says, is a lifeline: “Especially for caregivers, you don’t feel like you’re alone on this. You feel other people are going through the same thing, and there is help out there.”

That’s not always the case, especially in the tight-knit Hispanic community, says Meyling Eliash-Daneshfar, spokesperson for the Alzheimer’s Association California Southland chapter in Los Angeles, which serves a large Hispanic population.

“Because Latino families tend to rely on each other for care and support, often times they do not seek help outside the family network when they notice that the person’s memory is failing,” she says. Often, they think memory loss is part of the aging process, and lose an opportunity to get an early diagnosis.

But Mizis says cultural misunderstanding is only one barrier for Hispanics coping with the disease. For many in the Chicago area, she says, taking care of a loved one is often hindered by work.

“Not only do we have our family, sometimes (caregivers) have two…jobs and they are working long hours during the week,” she says. This puts extra pressure on caregivers and their family members, Mizis says.

So Mizis, in tandem with the Mexican consulate in Chicago and a myriad of community groups, formed LAMDA, which provides resources and information for family members who previously had little idea about how to provide for family members suffering from dementia.

The group aims to work with area Hispanics to teach them how to best care for relatives; conduct cultural sensitivity seminars for health providers; educate family members about their care options, and increase home- and community-based care services by Latino caregivers.

For many Hispanics, Mizis, the group's president, says, the number of resources available for them are unclear. She says that may be because some Hispanics are not used to having many options.

"It's really frustrating for me to see the Latino people without any access to the resources just because there are no (Hispanic-specific) programs or support groups for the family," she says.

Mizis hopes LAMDA will shed light on a confusing and frustrating process.

“The people that are at home don’t know where to go, what to do until it’s too late,” Mizis says.

The lack of resources for Hispanics and language barriers contribute to the misunderstanding of the disease, says Eliash-Daneshfar.

Arroyo says that watching her father’s mental state deteriorate has been painful.

“It’s sad. It’s heartbreaking, just seeing how he can’t recognize us anymore,” she says. “He doesn’t talk anymore. When he sees us, you see a smile on his face, but you wonder if he remembers anything.”

But, with help from LAMDA, which launched May 6, Arroyo and others see that they are not alone.

“Now we see there are a lot more cases maybe that existed before, but nobody was coming out,” she says.

Rojas, whose father spends his days in a Park Ridge adult day care center, says LAMDA has given her new found hope in navigating a situation that can breed feelings of helplessness, for both caregivers and patients.

“You find the strength somewhere to keep going,” she says.