State to Revoke Board-Care Home’s License

California Department of Social Services officials said Friday that they would revoke the license of a Long Beach board-and-care home where mentally ill residents allegedly went unbathed, brawled with each other and, in one case, fatally assaulted a staff member.

Over the last five years, Rema Manor House has accumulated a string of state inspection violations that include keeping food in unsanitary conditions and failing to prevent an employee from stealing $2,500 from a resident.

In one episode, Long Beach police said a resident was arrested in March 2003 on suspicion of murder in the death of staff member Lourdes Capitle, 56. In another, employees did not check on a missing resident for 12 hours, and his roommate discovered him dead from an apparent drug overdose, according to state records.

Los Angeles County mental health officials said they stopped referring patients to the home after the staff member’s killing but continued to monitor conditions there. On recent visits, county mental health workers found residents were still living in unsafe conditions.

“They were pretty bad,” said Debbie Innes-Gomberg, who supervises county mental health operations in Long Beach and the South Bay. “It’s been a long process.”

Despite opposition from the facility’s owner, an administrative law judge last month ruled that the state’s licensing authorities were justified in their efforts to pull the license that allowed Rema to house and care for 89 residents who suffer from schizophrenia and other serious mental illnesses.

“We’re in the process of revoking the license,” said Rapone Anderson, a spokesman for the Department of Social Services’ community care licensing division. “We don’t have an effective date

Anderson said the department also would revoke the license of another facility for elderly people where Rema’s owner, Reynaldo Jamir, sat on the board of directors. The home, Emerald Royal Retirement Home in Garden Grove, has collected a long list of citations since it was issued a state license in June 2002.

State records show that inspectors accused one Emerald staff member of slapping and pulling the hair of a resident. Among other deficiencies, inspectors cited the home for failing to properly monitor residents’ medicine and for rehiring a maintenance man with a criminal record 18 months after state officials demanded that he be fired.

Emerald has since fallen into receivership and Jamir is no longer involved in its operations, Anderson said.

Jamir said in a telephone interview that state officials should have given him another chance and that Rema’s conditions were not as bad as alleged.

“It’s nothing that grave, nothing to be alarmed of,” he said. “They do not recognize our effort to support the community.”

But county mental health officials said Jamir had been given enough chances. “I’ve spoken with him a number of times, including in the last week, with my staff going out, and he just doesn’t seem concerned,” Innes-Gomberg said.

County mental health workers spent Friday meeting with the 57 residents still living at Rema on Santa Fe Avenue to determine where to move them when the facility closes.