Welcome to Happy Hearts!

A Home Away From Home

Choosing someone to care for your child is a big decision — especially during the infant and toddler years.

At Happy Hearts, our goal is to create a warm, loving environment where children feel comfortable, parents feel confident, and every child is known and cared for as an individual.

Our days combine nurturing care with opportunities to explore, create, communicate, move, play outside, and simply be little. We introduce developmentally appropriate activities while also leaving plenty of time for the child-led play and everyday interactions where so much early learning happens.

Most importantly, we want every child who comes through our doors to feel safe, loved, and excited to be here.

Contact Us

Meet the Team

  • Irma

    Founder & Lead Caregiver — Foothill & 30th Avenue

    Irma is the heart behind Happy Hearts Family Daycare and the lead caregiver at our Foothill & 30th Avenue location. Before opening Happy Hearts, she spent eight years working at Chatham, where she gained extensive experience in early childhood education and developed a deep appreciation for how much young children learn through nurturing relationships, play, exploration, and everyday experiences.

    When her granddaughter Emily was born, Irma wanted to give her the same kind of enriching early childhood experience she had spent years helping create for other children. So she decided to bring everything she had learned home.

    What began with caring for her granddaughter grew into Happy Hearts Family Daycare — a warm, nurturing place where other children could receive that same thoughtful care and attention.

    Happy Hearts has since become a true family endeavor. Inspired by their mom, Irma's daughters Elisa and Alejandra have both followed in her footsteps. In 2024, Elisa expanded Happy Hearts by opening a second location in Eastmont Hills. In 2026, she passed the leadership of that location to her sister, Alejandra ("Ale"), continuing the family tradition of creating loving spaces for Oakland's youngest children.

    For Irma, Happy Hearts is more than a daycare. It's an extension of her family — a place where every child is known, loved, encouraged to explore, and given the space to grow.

  • Alejandra Leon

    Lead Caregiver — Eastmont Hills

    For Ale, caring for children has always been a family affair. She grew up watching her mom, Irma, pour her heart into caring for and teaching young children — first through her work in early childhood education and later through Happy Hearts Family Daycare.

    Over the years, what Irma built became something the whole family believed in. Ale saw firsthand the relationships her mom formed with children and their families and the warm, nurturing environment she created for little ones to learn and grow.

    In 2026, Ale took over leadership of the Happy Hearts Eastmont Hills location, which her sister Elisa had opened two years earlier. Today, Ale carries forward the same family-centered approach that has been at the heart of Happy Hearts from the beginning, while bringing her own personality, energy, and love for children to the program.

    For Ale, Happy Hearts is truly family — and she wants the children and parents who walk through the door to feel like they're part of that family, too.