Nobody referred Jasmine Banks to Tradition. She was a 10th grader at Champlin Park High School, sitting in a class she can no longer name, when a girl named Olivia started talking about her job. They were hiring servers. Jasmine looked it up. Minutes from her house.
She wasn’t friends with Olivia. She wasn’t part of the conversation. She applied anyway.
What she hadn’t planned for was two weeks later, when Olivia spotted her at work and realized, wait, you’re in my class.
“I was like, yeah, girl,” Jasmine says. “I overheard you in class saying they were hiring, and I came in and applied.”
Olivia thought that was awesome. It was fine.
Jasmine is 33 now, owns a house up the road and runs the place: executive director of Tradition, the senior living community in Brooklyn Park.
The eavesdropping has held up.
She climbed from the dining room into the kitchen. “It just sucks you in,” she says. When the culinary director left, he told her to apply for his job.
She got it.
“Next thing you know, they’re like, hey, why don’t you run two?” she says. Her response: “Are you gonna pay my mileage?”
In 2024, she left to run Heathers Manor in Crystal. A little over a year later, she came home.
That is the résumé. It is not the reason to read about her.
Mary has lived at Tradition for nearly 10 years. She’s a retired teacher, which matters because of what she remembers: back when Jasmine was a lead server, she recruited the residents as co-teachers. The new kids are learning, Jasmine told them. Be patient with them.
The remembering runs both directions.
Jasmine watched Mary’s grandsons grow up in that dining room. The youngest used to bolt from Mary’s chair to the lobby birdcage, knock on the glass (“Hi, bird! Hi, bird!”), and sprint back to deliver the news to “Gamma.” He’s in second grade now. The oldest is at Iowa State.
Mary isn’t even the longest witness. A couple of residents who lived at Tradition when Jasmine was 16 still do.
Twelve years ago, a resident named Joyce wanted her nails done.
Joyce was from Texas, dressed vibrantly and had a philosophy about the resident bus trips to Mystic Lake: the casino is dinner and a movie. You’re paying for the show.
So Jasmine spent her lunch breaks painting Joyce’s nails, in Joyce’s own polish, which she’d probably owned for years. Joyce talked the whole time, with her hands. By the time Jasmine finished, the nails were a mess.
Joyce never once asked her to fix them. She just told everyone: “Jasmine painted my nails.”
Joyce passed away years ago. Jasmine still thinks of her whenever she goes to a casino.
Nobody asked Jasmine to spend her lunch that way. Now she’s the one hiring, and her whole theory of the job is sitting in that lunch break.
“I can teach you pretty much anything here,” she says. “But I can’t teach you to be a caring person. That’s just gotta be in you already.”
Tradition doesn’t use agency staffing, which Jasmine calls one of its biggest flexes.
Mary, for the record, has taken up Wii bowling. What she likes most is that staff ask residents what they actually want to do.
“Some people literally are so lonely at home,” Jasmine says, “and then they move to a community like this, and they’re not lonely anymore.”
This fall’s Tradition newsletter carried a request from the executive director. New students are starting in the dining room. Please be patient while they learn.
It’s the same thing Jasmine asked of Mary nearly a decade ago.
Most of those students will move on. That’s what first jobs are for.
Then again, Jasmine’s came from a conversation she wasn’t part of, in a class she can’t remember, about a place a few minutes from home.
She’s been listening ever since.
PULL QUOTE (Flex Page 19):
“Some people literally are so lonely at home, and then they move to a community like this, and they’re not lonely anymore.” — Jasmine Banks
SIDEBAR (Flex Page 19):
Seventeen Years, One Building (Mostly)
May 2009: Server. Age 16. Hired on a tip she overheard in class. Served through a two-year program at North Hennepin Community College.
Lead server. Training new servers and asking residents to be patient with them.
Dining room manager. About seven years.
Culinary director. Four years, after Brian Brantner told her to apply for his job.
Assisted living license. Encouraged by Vice President of Operations Lori Sikes. Paid for by Transforming Age.
April 2024: Executive director, Heathers Manor. Her first time in the top job.
July 2025: Executive director, Tradition. Home.