Cooks, Caregivers Struggled to Aid Abandoned Care Home Patients

Cooks, Caregivers Struggled to Aid Abandoned Care Home Patients

Maurice Rowland knew that the closure notice stuck on the front door of his workplace meant the assisted-living residential facility was to be closed Thursday night because of a license revocation.

But why, he wondered, were 19 of the center's 32 residents still there - some with Alzheimer's, others with what he believed to be schizophrenia, all of them hungry and wanting dinner.

Almost all the caregivers had left. The manager and owners were nowhere to be found. Rowland was the cook, hired three months earlier to prepare meals for the residents at Valley Springs Manor in Castro Valley.

"I didn't know what was going on, but I couldn't just leave them there," Rowland said Tuesday from his Hayward home. "We had built a friendship. So I did the best I could."

Over the next 40 hours, Rowland and two caregivers - none of whom had been scheduled to work or asked by management to stay - frantically cooked, cleaned and bathed the residents, gave them their medications, and helped them in and out of their beds and wheelchairs. But they were in over their heads, and there were medication foul-ups. Residents became ill, and Rowland and the caregivers called 911 six or seven times, he said, before emergency responders finally took the last of the residents Saturday.

Full Article and Source:
Cook, Caregivers Struggled to Aid Center's Residents

Castro Valley care home patients abandoned

John Wildermuth

Updated 1:17 pm, Sunday, October 27, 2013

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  The front of the Valley Manor facility had a walkway to a backyard area Sunday October 27, 2013 in Castro Valley, Calif. The Valley Manor Community Care Home was shut down by the state and residents taken to local hospitals after much of the nursing staff left. Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle
  The front of the Valley Manor facility had a walkway to a backyard...
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  The Valley Manor facility was locked up and vacant Sunday October 27, 2013 in Castro Valley, Calif. The Valley Manor Community Care Home was shut down by the state and residents taken to local hospitals after much of the nursing staff left. Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle
  The Valley Manor facility was locked up and vacant Sunday October...
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  Dishes, plates and personal belongings still on tables Sunday October 27, 2013 indicate the residents left quickly in Castro Valley, Calif. The Valley Manor Community Care Home was shut down by the state and residents taken to local hospitals after much of the nursing staff left. Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle
  Dishes, plates and personal belongings still on tables Sunday...
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  The State of California Community Care Licensing order closing the Valley Manor was posted on the front door Sunday October 27, 2013 in Castro Valley, Calif. The Valley Manor Community Care Home was shut down by the state and residents taken to local hospitals after much of the nursing staff left. Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle
  The State of California Community Care Licensing order closing the...
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  Deacon Oscar Moore Jr. read the notice on the front door after trying to visit a relative inside Sunday October 27, 2013 in Castro Valley, Calif. The Valley Manor Community Care Home was shut down by the state and residents taken to local hospitals after much of the nursing staff left. Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle
  Deacon Oscar Moore Jr. read the notice on the front door after...
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  Burton Nash, who says his parents were being cared for, stopped by the facility Sunday October 27, 2013 in Castro Valley, Calif. He was hoping to pick up personal items of his parents. The Valley Manor Community Care Home was shut down by the state and residents taken to local hospitals after much of the nursing staff left. Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle
  Burton Nash, who says his parents were being cared for, stopped by...

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Fourteen sick and elderly patients were abandoned at a Castro Valley assisted living facility when the staff apparently walked out Thursday after the state ordered the home closed, Alameda County sheriff's deputies said.
Paramedics called to Valley Manor Residential Care at 17926 Apricot Way on Saturday afternoon found a notice on the door from the state Department of Social Services ordering the site to be closed as of Oct. 24.
Inside, they found the patients, many of them bedridden, attended by only a handful of staff members.
"Thursday came around, and the majority of the staff left and the majority of the patients remained," said sheriff's Sgt. J.D. Nelson.
The staff members who stayed, including a cook, a janitor and what is believed to be a single caretaker, "stayed because they felt bad for the patients," Nelson said. "They weren't getting paid or anything."
The patients all were taken by ambulance to other centers in the county, and none seemed to be suffering additional health problems from their abandonment.
The transport wasn't easy, Nelson added.
"We had people who were bedridden, in wheelchairs, amputees and people with mental problems. It ran the gamut," he said.
Deputies are still trying to determine how many people were at the center when it closed to ensure that none of the patients had wandered off on their own, Nelson said.
As of Saturday night, sheriff's investigators had not been in touch with the center's owners or the state officials responsible for the closure.
"Right now we have a lot more questions than answers," Nelson said. "There's a question of what happens when the state closes a home, whether they send anyone in afterward to see what happened."
The incident is being treated as a criminal case, and the investigation is continuing.
"All we know is that 14 people were left here today that shouldn't have been there by themselves," Nelson said.

John Wildermuth is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com