Door Shuts on a Place Like Home

At the age of 21, Mike McBride moved into the Reseda Care Center. He had suffered a debilitating stroke and thought this convalescent home was where he would spend the rest of his life.

During the next 18 years he made friendships with the center’s other residents, almost all of whom were much older.

“I felt like it was my home,” he said.

That home, his wheelchair and a local church were the touchstones of his life.

But last week, his life, along with 62 others, was suddenly uprooted when a U.S. Bankruptcy Court-appointed trustee shut down the Reseda nursing home, claiming the facility did not have enough money to keep it open another day.

Notified at 9:30 p.m. last Friday of the center’s imminent closure, McBride, his brother from Thousand Oaks and several friends had three hours and a bunch of plastic garbage bags to move his belongings.

McBride, now 39, ended up in Amber Care, a convalescent home in Glendale.

“It was traumatic,” he said. “I felt like I was displaced, like it was a fire or flood or whatever.”

Not surprisingly, the battle over who was responsible for the Reseda facility’s sudden demise has gone to the courts. Tempers have flared, accusations have been levied and a stern judge has made clear his intentions to get to the bottom of this.

But McBride doesn’t care. He just wishes he could go back to the place he called home.

“I loved it there because it had a homey atmosphere,” he said. “I miss the togetherness of the people there.”

About a dozen former residents of the Reseda home are also now in Amber Care.

But the delicate relationships formed among a group of people brought together at difficult times in their lives cannot be easily duplicated. They are also despondent, he said, like the kids who come from out of town to start at a new school.

“They all got into their little cliques with the people there,” said McBride, referring to the Reseda home. “There was a lot of camaraderie there that we miss.”

The disruption was also hard on many families who had put loved ones in the Reseda home.

Bennie Cortese of Playa del Rey said it was horribly painful to watch his 88-year-old mother, who has been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for 10 years, ousted from the nursing home at 1:30 a.m.

Though bedridden and unable to see or speak, his mother, Pauline Guzzone, was clearly agitated during the move, he said. She was left babbling and shouting in an ambulance as her son and daughter filled out paperwork. Cortese said he talked to his mother in Italian, a method he sometimes uses to soothe her.

Guzzone is now in Canoga Care Center and appears to have suffered no physical harm from last week’s eviction. But Cortese said his mother, who spent her teenage years fighting for unionization of garment workers and protesting sweatshops in New York City, should have never had to endure the indignities of the sudden move.

“All we want is for this lady to die in dignity,” he said. “She is going to die, we know. That’s all we ask.”

The patients and family members weren’t the only victims. Sixty-six employees, from nurse’s aides to maintenance workers, were left without jobs when the Reseda home closed. And the nursing home hadn’t paid its employees for at least two weeks, said Bill Mohr, former administrator of the Reseda Care Center.

“These people are hard working, they deserve to be paid.” Mohr said. With all the court action, he noted, no one is representing the employees.

“I’m just really angry. The employees need some type of representation and they have to speak for themselves.”

Despite bounced paychecks, most of the nursing home employees worked until the end, Mohr said, improvising when there was a lack of toiletries and other supplies for patients.

Nurses brought in linens and towels when there wasn’t enough cash to buy them, and supplied their own aspirin and gauze. The activity director brought in a barbecue and skewers from home so the residents could continue to have get-togethers.

A maintenance worker paid for batteries and lightbulbs out of his own pocket so that patients could operate their television remote controls and turn on overhead lamps. Mohr said he once spent $950 of his own money to have a washing machine repaired.

The former employees have not forgotten their former charges.

Katrina Cimmarrusti, who had been the activity director of the Reseda home, said she visited several of the patients in their new residences last weekend.

“When I saw them, they were crying, they want to come back,” she said. “I tell them maybe they’ll fit in . . . but there is no Reseda to return to.”