Elderly Woman Bilked Out of Home, Police Say : Nursing care: Owners of a health service are charged with grand theft. They allegedly coerced a client to sell them her house for half its value.

Elderly, alone and in need of care, Lola Hoffnagle wanted to live out her last years in the Lakewood home she loved. So when she fell and broke her hip in late 1986, the retired schoolteacher turned to the owners of a Bellflower nursing service to provide her with round-the-clock, in-home care.

But instead of looking out for her best interest, authorities believe the Cerritos couple that owned the service bilked Hoffnagle, now 94, out of her home and life savings, leaving her penniless and in a place she vowed never to be--a home that is not her own.

Jose Valeras, 55, and his wife Salva, 40, owners of the Safe Nurses Service Registry, were charged earlier this week with two counts each of grand theft of real property, one count of theft by a caretaker of an elderly person and one count of conspiracy, according to officials. They are scheduled to be arraigned in Los Cerritos Municipal Court on April 10.

Between September, 1986, and January, 1989, the Valerases allegedly charged Hoffnagle nearly $300,000 for in-home care and persuaded her to sell them her home for half its worth, said Deputy Dick Dinsmoor of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which has been investigating the case for a year.

Hoffnagle had spent a short time in a nursing home in the early 1970s and told neighbors she would never return. So when she broke her hip in September, 1986, an official at Lakewood Doctor’s Hospital referred her to the Valerases’ nursing service, Dinsmoor said. Nurses aides soon began coming to her home, at first working 24-hour shifts but eventually reducing that to 16 and then 12 hours, at her request, according to Dinsmoor.

“Hoffnagle talked to her doctor and said she wanted to reduce her care to 12 hours because she felt she was running out of money,” said Dinsmoor, who added that her doctor is not implicated in the alleged scam. “In March, 1988, she did (run out of money).”

The couple then allegedly offered to buy Hoffnagle’s house, valued at $130,000 to $140,000, for $65,000, and “as part of the agreement they said we’ll let you live rent-free in the house for five years,” Dinsmoor said. Hoffnagle continued to receive the service’s in-home care from March, 1988, through January, 1989--but at a cost of $65,000, authorities allege.

At that point, the detective said, “since she can no longer pay for this in-home care, the Valerases move her in-home care out. They take their nurses . . . and just abandon her.”

Neighbors who noticed that Hoffnagle was no longer being cared for notified the county Department of Public Social Services, who placed Hoffnagle in the Bellflower Christian Retirement Center, Dinsmoor said. A psychologist later found Hoffnagle to be “incompetent . . . with a diminished mental capacity,” he said.

Authorities began looking into the matter last March.

The couple were arrested last month but were released on bail. They were taken into custody again Thursday.

The current owner of the nursing service, Edna Adriano, painted a quite different picture of the Valerases, describing the couple as “hard working.”

“She is a very good person and Joe is a very good person,” Adriano said.

She said Salva was spoken of highly by others who used the service. But she added that she could sympathize with both the Valerases and Hoffnagle.

“It’s real expensive to provide medical service,” Adriano said. “I have two points of view, (one) as a person in business, the other side is ‘poor lady,’ ” she said, referring to Hoffnagle.

John Hill, 27, who has lived next door to Hoffnagle his entire life, believes he is one of the few people on the block the elderly woman can still remember. Hill said he knew her memory was fading with time, and felt there was something wrong with the in-home care she was receiving.

“It takes only two months for injuries to heal, and the nursing service came and stayed for years,” said Hill, who spoke regularly with Hoffnagle and believes she paid up to $300 a day for the service.

Hill remembers Hoffnagle as a kind, independent woman. “She lived alone as long as I’ve been alive,” he said. “When I was a young kid, she used to travel the world every year. And she’d have all the neighborhood kids over to watch her slides.”