Falling through the cracks

MISSION — Walter Hochbaum spent days trying to pull himself back up when he fell in September.

The 82-year-old widower was unable to stand or call for help until he was found by a utility worker. In the meantime, his nine dogs had overrun his three-room house.

A fiercely independent man, he spent months in the hospital and in a rehabilitative care facility before he returned home.

But that’s when things got really bad.

He found most of his belongings — tapes, clothes, papers — thrown into a trash container or onto his driveway.

A case worker from state Adult Protective Services had intervened to make sure he came back to a livable home and had someone to help him care for himself. But she didn’t keep a close eye on the people she hired to do it.

The caregiver she hired brought in a substitute. When $10,000 worth of charges appeared on Hochbaum’s credit cards, he pointed his finger at the substitute who has since disappeared.

And when Hochbaum told APS he would look for further help from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, he ended up in limbo and alone.

DESTRUCTIVE SERVICES

Hochbaum’s case, while atypical, is a sad example of the abuse and exploitation to which the elderly are sometimes subjected, advocates say. But it may also indicate a hole in the safety net provided by agencies like APS, which is less well funded than its children’s services counterpart.

Adult Protective Services has a dual mission. As a state agency, it investigates allegations of elder abuse; it also identifies seniors who have been exploited or neglected and are in need of help and care in order to remain independent, then contracts with local agencies to provide those services.

A case worker from APS had approached Hochbaum in the hospital; he could not return to his home in its condition, she said. According to APS’s regional director, Ann Cortez, he was “adamant” about returning home, so the agency contracted with the home-care company.

Hochbaum’s case worker and her immediate supervisor declined to speak to The Monitor, but Cortez said the agency’s primary responsibility is investigative, and service planning for exploited seniors is a secondary, if important, mission.

Case workers can’t personally screen individual service providers entering the home and rely on a list of state-licensed agencies for home services.

“There is some safeguard,” Cortez said. “The hope is that the state agency that licenses those … would have those regulations in place.”

Another state agency, the Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services, licenses home health-care agencies in the state.

The process of rectifying the damage wrought on his finances has been a slow and labor-intensive one for Hochbaum.

“I call them adult destructive services,” he said sadly. “It’s a shame when you have to be afraid of people assigned to help you. You should be able to trust them.”

Hochbaum lives alone and has no close family to care for him. A rumpled but lively old man, everyone agrees he is ornery and stubborn — including Hochbaum himself.

Missing since he returned home are most of his clothes, his tapes and records, many of his bills and papers and the beloved video of him and his late wife appearing on “Donahue” in the 1980s, talking about the Wisconsin nudist camp they had run.

There is also a trash container next to his house, placed there nearly three months ago, that still contains ruined pieces of his life. It has yet to be removed despite increasingly angry complaints from his neighbors.

PRIVATE CARE

On Monday, the results of living without help showed in the state of Hochbaum’s home. The floor was dusty and papers were beginning to pile up again. In the back corner of his combination kitchen and bedroom, enormous anthills were growing, and Hochbaum — unable to support his weight reliably after a bruising fall on his hip when he tried to pick something off the floor — could not sweep them away.

As he tries to re-organize upset parts of his life and finances, Hochbaum is scathing and not shy about what he believes is the root cause of his woes.

“Privatization,” he said. “They’re in it for the money.”

By hiring contractors whom they do not personally supervise, screen or bond, APS is “inviting this kind of stuff,” he said. “Any time you get private enterprise in on it, watch out.”

Providers, who for the most part are chosen by case workers, are paid from agency emergency funds.

APS contracted with En Mi Casa Primary Home Care to clean out Hochbaum’s home and help take care of the man. En Mi Casa sent Ricardo Garcia over to take care of Hochbaum. Efraim Gutierrez, the agency’s owner, said Garcia had only lasted a couple of months at En Mi Casa before being fired for poor attendance.

The company is investigating Garcia’s actions toward Hochbaum, including Garcia’s introduction of a Florstella Martinez, whom he said was his girlfriend. Neither Garcia nor Martinez could be reached for comment.

Gutierrez denied that his company’s cleaning had been destructive.

“We were removing debris,” he said. “We don’t go in and destroy a place.”

He wouldn’t have torn out rugs, he said, claiming he doesn’t know who did that — or who left them in the driveway.

En Mi Casa is currently on a watch list and will not get more APS contracts until an investigation has been complete, said Regina Garcia, a regional spokeswoman for APS.

And the agency has opened an exploitation case on Ricardo Garcia and Martinez.

“We believe exploitation did take place,” Regina Garcia said.

Meanwhile, Hochbaum is pursuing legal action. Although he still struggles to walk more than a few steps at a time, he has driven to a number of Rio Grande Valley cities, including Edinburg and McAllen, to file criminal complaints against Martinez for credit card abuse.

Edinburg police Chief Quirino Muñoz confirmed that Hochbaum had filed an affidavit and said his department was investigating.

While the VA sometimes provides funds to poorer veterans to bring in their own home-care providers, Hochbaum has yet to apply for the service. However, his APS-paid provider was removed in the expectation that he will be able to find one.

Meanwhile, Hochbaum is left mostly alone. A nurse paid for by APS occasionally comes to care for him, but he no longer has help with day-to-day activities.

According to the agency’s Regina Garcia, a new evaluation will be completed soon to find Hochbaum a new provider until he’s set up. Hochbaum, meanwhile, has a new dog — the other nine were taken to the Upper Valley Humane Society when he went to the hospital — and occasional, grudging help from neighbors.

Beyond that, however, he is very much alone.

Sara Perkins covers Starr County and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach her at (956) 683-4472. For this and more local stories, visit www.themonitor.com.

The story “Falling through the cracks” on Page 1A in the Feb. 15 edition of The Monitor contained an error. The home healthcare agency that was contracted to provide services to Walter Hochbaum was En Mi Casa Primary Home Health Care, a Rio Grande City company owned by Efraim Gutierrez, not Mi Casa Primary Home Health Care, which is based in Edinburg.

The Monitor sincerely regrets the error and strives to accurately report the news in Hidalgo County and the Rio Grande Valley. Please report any errors of fact to the reporter whose byline appears on the story.