ST. LOUIS – Nearly three weeks after the sudden closure of a St. Louis nursing home, a former resident remains missing. Advocates for the elderly in St. Louis confirm a missing person report has been filed with police but did not release that individual’s name.
Reversed hinges have now been bolted over the entrance doors to the building at Kingshighway and Highland in north St. Louis.
There is a new glimmer of hope for the rest of those who called Northview Village home.
Thirty-two newly-trained case workers are fanning out to check on former residents who were put out of the home on Dec. 15, 2023, with little or no warning and without their belongings or medical records in a still-unknown number of cases.
In June 2023, after receiving referrals from Adult Protective Services, TBI agents initiated an investigation into an allegation that a 38-year-old caregiver for several home care patients in Maury County was using the victims’ debit cards to make fraudulent, personal charges on an online gambling site. The investigation identified Cynthia Dobbins as the caregiver responsible for the theft from the victims’ accounts.
On December 14, 2023, the Maury County Grand Jury returned indictments charging Cynthia Taylor Dobbins (DOB 09/21/1985) with four counts of Financial Exploitation of an Elderly/ Vulnerable Adult and four counts of Theft of $1,000 or less. Dobbins turned herself in at the Maury County Sheriff’s Office on December 29, 2023, and was released after posting a $10,000 bond.
Yep. Another famous one-name celeb is about to immerse herself in the often smarmy and predatory world of conservatorship. Move over Britney, this time its Cher who has turned to the courts to help her save her son, Elijah Blue, from the drugs and destructive behavior which have defined his life. On January 5 Cher is expected to file a petition temporary conservatorship of Elijah in a California court. I’m here to tell you temporary in this type of court almost always turns into a permanent situation. Once a judge establishes any kind of conservatorship (called guardianship in most states) it is next to impossible to escape the arrangement.
Cher may be relegating her son to forever live under court control. I just hope she was fully informed about the pitfalls of conservatorship. After many years investigating this routinely exploitative system I sure hope Cher realizes what a morass she may be signing up for! Does she realize that this ill-regulated and largely unsupervised system is populated by financial predators just waiting in the wings for juicy, lucrative cases like this? Simply say the words, “Cher’s son” and dollar signs pop into their eyes.
Singer Cher cannot find her son Elijah Blue Allman to serve him with legal papers — but asked that the court still allow her petition to become his conservator move forward.
According to court documents obtained by RadarOnline.com, the legendary singer asked the court to allow for permission to serve her son Elijah with the conservatorship papers via an alternative method.
Cher said she is “unable to locate” Elijah now but did send notice of the hearing to his email. The singer said she emailed Elijah’s wife Marieangela notice too.
The singer said she needed to take over control of his finances. Cher said Elijah’s late father Gregg Allman’s estate distributes regular payments to Elijah.
She said she feared he would spend the money on drugs, leaving him with no assets to provide for himself and “putting his life at risk.”
According to The Los Angeles Times, US District Judge Josephine L. Staton filed an “order finding defendant competent to stand trial” on Tuesday. Interestingly, “the order was placed under seal until lawyers for both sides have a chance to identify information in it that they want to be kept confidential, such as health records or other sensitive material.” It will be under seal for at least five days, per Courthouse News.
Now, this is a big deal considering the ex-lawyer’s legal team has been arguing he shouldn’t be forced to take the stand because of his declining mental state. Erika Jayne‘s ex-husband was diagnosed with dementia and late-onset Alzheimer’s disease in 2021. He is currently living in a “restricted memory care unit” at an assisted living facility, where he has been since October 2022. Hoping to use all of this to their benefit, his lawyers submitted a court filing in June arguing he wasn’t mentally well enough to stand trial, which caused this competency hearing.
In January 2018, Netflix began airing
a show entitled “Dirty Money,” a docu-series aimed to shed light on
true stories of scandal and corruption. On March 11, 2020, an episode of
the series called “Guardians, Inc.” portrayed millionaire Charles
Thrash as the victim of an abusive guardianship masterminded by his
niece, Tonya Barina. The episode presents Barina as having taken undue
advantage of her uncle by wrongfully selling his assets and using his
estate for personal gain. After the episode aired, Barina received a
great deal of hate mail from the episode’s audience. In March 2021,
Barina filed a lawsuit against Netflix for defamation.
Soon thereafter, Netflix filed a
motion to dismiss the case. In August 2021, a Judge in Bexar County,
Texas granted Netflix’s motion. However, Barina appealed, and on August
31, 2022, the Fourth Circuit reversed and remanded the case, stating
that there was no actual evidence of Barina committing any wrongdoing;
therefore, the episode could be considered “defamatory.”
The Fourth Circuit noted that the
depictions of Barina inaccurately represented the court proceedings in
connection with Thrash’s guardianship. The actual facts were that Barina
stepped in as the guardian of her uncle’s estate in 2017 after his
girlfriend at the time, Laura Martinez, and her daughter, Brittany
Martinez, were accused of appropriating his assets. Apparently, Laura
Martinez tricked Thrash into marrying her and adopting her children.
But, the episode in question represented Laura Martinez as Thrash’s
common-law wife and allowed Martinez, her daughter, and their attorney
Phillip Ross to speak on behalf of Thrash without giving Barina the
opportunity to tell her side of the story.
The Fourth Circuit found that, during
the creation of the offending episode, Netflix had access to the 2019
court order, which imposed monetary sanctions on Laura and Brittany
Martinez. In other words, it was Laura and Brittany Martinez that had
engaged in the wrongful conduct, while Netflix argued that there was
evidence that Barina had allegedly offered to step down as guardian if
she received a certain sum of money, plus she failed to pay Thrash’s
bills, and allegedly closed down his business, without his permission.
The Fourth Circuit pointed out that the episode failed to mention that
Barina had a legal right to use the estate funds to pay for legal
expenses and attorney fees. There was no other evidence that showed
Barina doing anything wrong.
In short, the court concluded that
the episode was misleading and did not convey all of the truthful
backgrounds regarding Thrash’s guardianship. As a result, the Fourth
Circuit Justices reversed the ruling in Netflix’s favor and remanded the
case to the District Court in Bexar County, Texas.
Justices Patricia O. Alvarez, Irene Rios, and Beth Watkins sat on the panel for the Fourth Court of Appeals.
The appellees are represented by
Laura Lee Prather and Catherine Lewis Robb of Haynes and Boone LLP and
Rachel F. Strom and Katherine M. Bolger of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP.
Barina is represented by Carl J. Kolb of Carl J. Kolb PC and Glenn Deadman of Glenn Deadman PC.
The case is Netflix Inc. et al. v. Tonya Barina, case number 04-21-00327, in the Texas Court of Appeals for the Fourth District.
Gavin
Newsom is right to demand more from counties. But he also needs to be
realistic about what they can accomplish regarding drugs and
homelessness.
By Chronicle Editorial Board Dec 30, 2023
Gov.
Gavin Newsom speaks about mental health crisis before signing off on
two major pieces of legislation to transform the state’s mental health
system and to address the state’s worsening homelessness crisis in Los
Angeles, on Oct. 12. Roughly 100 petitions to fast-track people with
untreated schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders into housing and
medical care under an alternative mental health court program created
by Newsom have been submitted in seven California counties as of Dec. 1.
Counties
“have to do their job with a deeper sense of urgency,” Newsom said at a
recent news conference. “People are dying on their watch.”
Counties
cried foul. Local behavioral health systems, already overstretched and
understaffed, are being asked to implement complex new laws with
“yet-to-be-identified resources, physical (capacity) and workforce
capacity,” said Michelle Doty Cabrera, executive director of the County
Behavioral Health Directors Association of California.
Newsom
is right to demand increased transparency and accountability from
counties. But he also needs to be realistic about what counties can
accomplish under current conditions.
As our editorial board has documented over the past year,
California has a severe shortage of mental health beds at all levels of
acuity, leaving tens of thousands of severely mentally ill people with
nowhere to go but the streets, jail or prison. The lack of capacity has
created persistent bottlenecks in California’s behavioral health system,
leaving some people with improved conditions trapped in locked
facilities even as others with acute needs languish in lower-level settings or on the street.
That’s
a main reason why most counties are choosing to delay implementation of
SB43: The system can’t handle a significant jump in conservatorships.
Hospital emergency rooms are already overflowing with patients waiting
for inpatient psychiatric beds and state hospital placements. Nor are
there any locked facilities in California that specifically treat people with substance use disorder, according to local officials.
Mark
Ghaly, secretary of California’s Health and Human Services Agency,
recently acknowledged that in some cases, “we’re going to have to define
and identify places where these individuals can go.”
But, he argued, “We can always find reasons to slow-walk just about anything.”
But
California also runs the risk of encouraging counties to incentivize
speed at the expense of safety. People with severe behavioral health
issues need appropriate care — they shouldn’t be thrown into the first
housing unit that becomes available simply because politicians are
trying to clean up the streets ahead of the 2024 elections.
That
doesn’t mean sitting back and allowing people to deteriorate on the
streets. But placing severely ill people in inappropriate housing is
also unacceptable and can lead to serious consequences.
Such
violent cases may be outliers; research shows that mentally ill people
are more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators of it. But they
nevertheless underscore the importance of placing individuals with
severe needs in facilities capable of meeting their needs.
“We
have so many people in our hotels who should not be there,” Randy Shaw,
executive director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, San Francisco’s
biggest nonprofit SRO operator, told the editorial board.
Robert Okin,
former chief of psychiatry at Zuckerberg San Francisco General
Hospital, told the editorial board that he’s worked with mentally ill
homeless patients whose condition deteriorated after they were placed in housing due to the lack of onsite services and support.
And
CARE Court isn’t even the biggest worry: San Francisco had received
just 18 petitions as of Dec. 26, according to Judge Michael Begert, who
oversees the local CARE Court. The most urgent question is where the
thousands eligible for California’s new conservatorship law will be
housed.
Newsom is sponsoring a March 2024 ballot measure
that would require counties to spend a significant portion of their
mental health funds on housing people with the most complex needs and
offering them intensive wraparound services. It would also authorize
nearly $6.4 billion in bonds to build behavioral health facilities and
housing and invest in a highly trained workforce.
But, even if voters approve the measure, it likely will take years for many of these facilities to materialize.
Meanwhile, other monies the Newsom administration is pouring into behavioral health are mostly temporary.
“How
do we sustain programs that have been started using one-time or
time-limited funds?” Hillary Kunins, San Francisco’s behavioral health
director, asked the editorial board. The bridge housing money
prioritized for CARE Court participants, for example, runs out in June
2027.
Despite
the obvious limitations of CARE Court and expanded conservatorship, the
state clearly feels that it’s done its part to address the multipronged
crisis on our streets.
“We’ve
met the expectations that have been set by local leaders,” Newsom
recently said. “We’ve exceeded them in so many ways. … We just need
local partners that are as enthusiastic, passionate and being willing to
be accountable as the state.”
Local officials view it differently.
“Cities and counties have been really left in many, many ways on their own by the federal and state government,” Kunins said.
With San Francisco and California staring down massive budget deficits in 2024,
policymakers’ handling of this period will be pivotal. With
collaboration, we have a chance at meaningfully making a dent in
unacceptable street conditions. But if officials sacrifice this
long-term goal for cheap political fixes and deflections, we can expect
more of the same on our streets next year.
The U.S. population is growing older: In 2017, the Census Bureau predicted that the number of Americans 65 and older would nearly double to 95 million by 2060.
Many people look forward to their
proverbial golden years, but for vulnerable older Americans, this period
can devolve into a nightmare of physical, emotional, sexual or
financial abuse, and, sometimes, a combination of these behaviors.
It behooves advisors and client-facing associates to be on the lookout for indications that older clients may be at risk of financial abuse. Firms can establish risk-management policies and procedures for dealing with these sensitive situations.
The personal finance website WalletHub
brings this critical issue to the fore by comparing elder-abuse
protections across the United States. Its dataset ranges from the volume
of elder-abuse, gross-neglect and exploitation complaints to states’
laws dealing with financial elder abuse.
“Falling prey to financial abuse can
have dire consequences for anyone, but our older population is
particularly susceptible,” WalletHub analyst Cassandra Happe
said in a statement. “Abuse can greatly impact their ability to afford
basic necessities, especially since many seniors are on a fixed income.”
The Federal Trade Commission recently reported that older adults reported losing more than $1.6 billion to fraud in 2022. But prevalence of abuse — in all its manifestations — may be much higher than official reports indicate.
To determine the states with the best
protection against elder abuse, WalletHub researchers compared the 50
states and the District of Columbia across these key dimensions:
Prevalence (40 points), including share of elder-abuse, gross-neglect and exploitation complaints and estimated elder fraud rate
Resources (30
points), including total expenditures on prevention per resident 65 and
older and total long-term care ombudsman program funding per resident
65 and older
Protection (30 points), including financial elder-abuse laws and frequency of assisted-living facilities inspections
They evaluated these dimensions using
16 relevant metrics and scored each one on a 100-point scale, with 100
representing the “best protection against elder abuse.”
Finally, they determined each state’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its overall score.
See the accompanying gallery for the 12 states with the best elder-abuse protections. (Click to go to gallery)
PUEBLO, Colo. (KRDO) - On December 25, the Pueblo Police Department
(PPD) said that officers responded to a report of a family disturbance
with weapons in the 2000 block of Elmwood Lane on the city's south side.
"We got the call just before 10:30 on Christmas night," said Sgt.
Franklyn Ortega. "It was from a mother who lives with her son."
The PPD said that the reporting party stated her son assaulted her
but she was able to leave her residence; officers were able to contact
her at a neighbor's house and found she had multiple lacerations on her
face and arms, and was covered in blood.
The woman told the PPD that she had been sitting in her recliner when
her son kicked her and started to stab her with a kitchen knife.
Officers responded to the home where they saw the scene aligned with the
woman’s narrative, however, the suspect was not home or located.
The PPD said that they arrested Phillip Williams, 47, in connection to this incident.
They stated that they arrested Williams while responding to an
alleged burglary at the Pueblo Country Club and that he is facing
charges of first-degree assault, false imprisonment, and elder abuse in
relation to the alleged stabbing.
"He was probably just trying to find a place to stay because he knew
we were looking for him," Ortega explained. "If he wasn't caught, then
he might have come back to the house and maybe assaulted her again, or
do something worse."
Police said that the victim's injuries were serious but not life-threatening.
"We may never know the motive behind this," Ortega said. "Part of
this case is there's a mandatory restraining order, so he'll be
restrained from living with his mother in the future."
Williams is scheduled to be formally advised of the charges against him on Jan. 3.
Broken system allowed theft, exploitation, isolation and abuse to continue
Broken system allowed theft, exploitation, isolation and abuse to continue Earlier this year, former professional guardian Traci Hudson pleaded guilty to 19 felony charges involving exploitation and abuse of elderly people under her care. The ABC Action News I-Team has been reporting about Hudson and her guardianship cases for years. Her cases shows systematic failures within Florida’s professional guardianship system, which was designed to protect the state’s most vulnerable residents.
By:
Adam Walser
CLEARWATER, Fla. —
Earlier this year, former professional guardian Traci Hudson pleaded
guilty to 19 felony charges involving exploitation and abuse of elderly
people under her care.
The ABC Action News I-Team has been reporting about Hudson and her guardianship cases for years.
Her
cases shows systematic failures within Florida’s professional
guardianship system, which was designed to protect the state’s most
vulnerable residents.
Sentence came seven years after her first crime
Hudson’s first guardianship case was assigned in April 2016.
Records show she stole from one of her wards starting in August 2016, just four months after her first appointment.
It took seven years for her to finally stand trial and plead guilty.
“She’s gonna be receiving an eight-and-a-half-year Department of
Corrections sentence followed by 20 years of probation,” Richard McKyton
said in sharing the sentencing agreement in open court on July 10.
That hearing was delayed because Hudson was found unresponsive in a local hotel after what police reports describe as a suicide attempt in April.
Several
family members of her former wards and guardianship reform advocates
attended the hearing in which Hudson entered her plea.
“Eight and a half years is not enough for what she’s done to so many families,” Lesa Martino said.
“I
made quite a few complaints to the office of public and professional
guardians about Traci Hudson—only to be called a conspiracy theorist,
that none of this was going on,” said guardianship reform advocate
Hillary Hogue. “Until thankfully, with, of course, Adam Walser of ABC
Action News in Tampa, uncovering the crimes that were being committed.”
WFTS
Hillary
Hogue is a guardianship reform advocate who reported Hudson's suspected
criminal behavior multiple times before Hudson's arrest
Gun thefts date back to 2016
Hudson was charged with stealing guns and other property owned by her ward, Robert Moore, in August 2016.
Ryan says Hudson neglected his elderly father’s needs but stole his gun collection.
Ryan Moore
Ryan Moore and his later father, Robert Moore
Records from the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office show Hudson sold
the guns at multiple pawn shops in Pinellas and Pasco counties.
Police
reports say Hudson whited out the guns from her original inventory
report and submitted fraudulent documents to the court.
“I asked
her about the guns, and she said all the guns had been stolen except for
one, and it was in a police evidence room somewhere,” Ryan said.
Father was isolated, daughter loses home
“My father was exploited, isolated while Traci was the guardian of my father,” Lesa said.
WFTS
Lesa Martino
In 2017, Lesa reported to state agencies that Hudson abused and financially exploited her father, Roland.
She also wrote disparaging remarks about Hudson on social media.
“Traci
filed a libel/slander lawsuit against me in 2018. And this is when she
was committing crimes already, and so I ended up losing the case, and I
ended up losing my house to Traci,” Lesa said.
The I-Team was there in February of 2022 when Lesa was thrown out of her home and most of her belongings were taken to the dump.
“I was a witness to the corruption and then I get punished,” Lesa said at the time.
Hotel owner put into guardianship after selling property to relative
“My great aunt ran her business for many years until the guardianship
process started,” Gedi Pakalnis said on the day we first met him at a
guardianship reform protest in St. Petersburg in early 2019.
A
realtor petitioned the court to put Dirse into guardianship after Dirse
sold part of her hotel for a below-market price to her great-nephew
Pakalnis, who lived with her and helped her for 15 years.
WFTS
Gedi Pakalnis
“He was taking property from Mrs. Dirse for less than fair market
value,” Pinellas County Probate Judge Pamela Campbell said during a
hearing in which Hudson tried to reverse the sale of the property.
Hudson filed an eviction against Pakalnis and used Dirse’s money to sue him.
“She’s trying to get her hotel back. She didn’t sell it to him,” said Hudson, who was known as Traci Samuel at the time.
Hudson
moved Dirse to assisted living and obtained a no-contact order from
Judge Campbell, which prevented Pakalnis from visiting or calling her.
“She doesn’t want him to see her. I’m respecting the privacy of her,” Hudson said.
The
I-Team tried to visit Dirse to determine whether she had the capacity
to live independently after an attorney assigned to represent her
recommended she not be put into guardianship, but Hudson denied our
request.
During court proceedings, Judge Campbell praised Hudson, who went by the last name Samuel at the time.
“I
know Ms. Samuel to be a good and professional guardian. She’s on a
number of the cases that I have,” Judge Campbell said in response to
complaints from Pakalnis about the treatment of his relative.
Dirse died alone in an assisted living facility in 2020 from COVID-19.
Her estate paid more than $287,000 in guardian and attorney fees.
Pakalnis didn’t get to see or talk to his great-aunt during her final two years.
“We
wish that the last two years away from her family and away from her
home would not be lost to her. That things could have been different for
her,” Pakalnis said during a memorial service on the beach near Dirse’s beloved home.
WFTS
Gedi Pakalnis speaks at memorial service for Genyte Dirse
Pattern of thefts, lies and abuse uncovered
In November
2019, Hudson was arrested after investigators say she took $541,000 from
a 93-year-old dementia patient under her care.
Pinellas County Sheriff's Office
Traci Hudson being arrested in 2019
Investigators discovered she used a power-of-attorney agreement to pay herself $1,600 from his bank account.
Hudson used the money to buy tickets to Tampa Bay Bucs games, purchased clothes and jewelry and closed on a 4,800 square-foot home in Riverview, which she later sold for a $250,000 profit.
“That
case that she was charged with is a power of attorney case. Totally
different from our guardianship cases,” Judge Campbell said at a hearing
the day after Hudson’s arrest.
Campbell ordered the Pinellas County Clerk’s Office to investigate Hudson’s 45 guardianship cases in Pinellas County.
She also was assigned cases in Hillsborough County at the time.
Hudson resigned from all her cases after her 2019 arrest.
“If there are any red flags that are brought to our attention, then we will address that at that point in time,” Campbell said.
Three years later, a 77-page report filled with red flags not only exposed problems with Hudson’s cases but also with the guardianship system.
WFTS
77-page report identified dozens of issues with Hudson's cases
“What it produced was just evidence of flagrant fraud,” said retired
Pinellas County Circuit Court Judge Linda Allan, who previously served
as a probate judge.
“There’s
very little direct oversight of what the guardian does,” said Pinellas
County Clerk of Court Ken Burke, who oversaw the report.
WFTS
Pinellas County Clerk Ken Burke
The report shows Hudson was paid $406,000 from her wards’ assets.
Seven times she billed for working between 25-and-39 hours in a single day.
“There was not just a single instance but many instances of billing more than 18 hours in a day,” Burke said.
The
report says she paid realtors who served with her on the guardianship
association board commissions of up to 16% and sold homes without
appraisals at below-market prices.
One home, which belonged to one of Hudson’s wards, sold three times in a single day.
The first time, it sold for $30,450, the second time for $37,000 and the third time for $57,984.
That
represented a 90% increase from the first sale to the third, but the
ward didn’t share in any of that money… the realtor and first two buyers
did.
That investigation led to additional charges in 2021 and 2023.
WFTS
Judge Pam
Campbell ordered the Pinellas County Clerk's Office to investigate
Hudson's cases, which resulted in new felony charges in 2021 and 2023
Replacement guardian finds evidence of neglect
After her arrest, evidence emerged that she not only stole from her wards but also failed to properly care for them.
The
guardian appointed to replace Hudson found that Dirse, who had several
medical conditions, had not been to a doctor or a dentist while under
Hudson’s care.
On
a report filed in court records about her first visit to Dirse’s home,
the new guardian wrote, “Nothing has been done, not even food out of the
refrigerator. Speechless!”
Hudson failed to fix a broken window at Dirse’s home, resulting in $250-a-day fines from the City of St. Pete Beach.
The fines eventually totaled $45,750.
Hudson
got permission from Judge Campbell to transfer $100,000 from Dirse’s
investment account to pay for repairs, but they were never done.
Hudson's attorney: "There's very little oversight"
Hudson will be 83 years old when she completes her prison time and probation.
The same age as many of her victims.
“That
is not a perfect system, if you will. There’s very little oversight,”
Hudson’s defense attorney Richard McKyton said outside the courthouse
after her sentencing.
McKyton says his client wasn’t the only one to blame for what went wrong in so many of her cases.
“None
of these choices get made until the attorney for the estate or the
guardianship reviews the request, whatever that might be. And not until
an actual judge signs off on those things,” he said.
“She blames the system. But she’s part of the system, and she had to know that what she was doing was wrong,” said Martino.
We contacted Hudson at the Lowell Prison Annex, where she is serving her sentence, and requested an interview.
We have not heard back from her.
You
can find the I-Team’s decade-long investigation into the many problems
with Florida’s guardianship system by viewing our entire “Price of Protection” series.
(Picture credit: Dania Maxwell/Los Angeles Times/TNS) LOS ANGELES — “Unforgettable Sunrise’s” composer, 19-year-old Jacob Rock, listened from the far side of the room. Jacob, dressed in a brown Neil Young T-shirt, sat beside his father, Paul Rock, and watched through a mop of brown hair that nearly covered his eyes. Jacob was nearly vibrating with excitement as the strings rippled and marimba clattered. He had lived with this music for years, unable to get anyone to hear it. Now it was finally out.
After the rehearsal, Paul, 64, spoke about his son, bewildered by the scale of the music they’d just heard: “He’s been invisible to the world until this,” Paul said.
Jacob Rock lives with profound non-oral autism. His condition makes him all but unable to speak, with other debilitating physical effects inhibiting communication and socializing. Until three years ago, he’d been unable to speak with his family outside of physical gestures, which often conveyed deep frustration and self-harm.
In 2020, a breakthrough utilizing text-to-voice software revealed that Jacob had a deep acuity and sensitivity to language and art. He could now verbally communicate with his parents, and they could learn about his inner world.
Jacob revealed that since childhood, he’d been composing a symphony. He had all the arrangements and melodies locked in place. He couldn’t write notation or play the instruments his music required, but he could describe what he heard. Could they help him find a way to play it?
A cute, miniature cow is creating a buzz in Oakwood Creative Care in Mesa, Arizona, for cheering and helping elderly people with memory problems.
Dolly Star visits the adult day center weekly to bring joy and a unique kind of therapeutic company to its community members who have been diagnosed with neurological disorders like dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and schizophrenia.
Their delightful encounters with Dolly are helping these elderly residents to develop new memories and recall old ones. The miniature cow responds with happy licks to affectionate pats and strokes. As a reward, the residents give the adorable cow marshmallows, which they learned is Dolly’s favorite treat.
ST. LOUIS – Nearly three weeks after the sudden closure of a St. Louis nursing home, a former resident remains missing. Advocates for the elderly in St. Louis confirm a missing person report has been filed with police but did not release that individual’s name.
