Family searches for answers to why father died after stay in Carson City sober-living home

When Joe Tummarello moved into a sober living home in Carson City called Lyfe Recovery, his friends and family thought he was doing well. However, at the end of July, he wound up in the hospital after his health declined rapidly. His family says this was due to severe neglect at the hands of the owner and manager of the facility. By several accounts, he was denied medical treatment until a senior living home provider stepped in and took him to the hospital, where he died a week later.

The question is: did Joe Tummarello die before his time? And if the answer is yes, then is someone responsible for his demise?

The manager of the house quit without notice days after Joe's death. The owner of the business shut the facility down and is in the process of filing bankruptcy. The Carson City Justice Court had a contract with Lyfe Recovery and placed clients from its drug court program into their sober living home.

When the court found out that a man had died on the premises, they were told by the owner of Lyfe Recovery the man was a homeless person who had no family and nowhere to go, and that he was only in the home for a few days before being transferred to the hospital, all of which, it turns out, was false. Neither owner nor manager called an ambulance or contacted a doctor for a man who had been a client of the rehab facility since 2018 and had several family members who had no idea he was ill.

For the weeks before Joe's death, according to the house manager, he continuously asked the owner to move Joe, but she took no action to find him a higher level of care.

One thing everyone involved can agree on: no one is taking responsibility for Joe Tummarello's death.

When Ellen Jackson arrived at Lyfe Recovery she was expecting to find her newest client, 76-year-old Joe Tummarello, packed and ready to be moved into her senior-living home. Instead, what she found was a man barely clinging to life in a state of dire neglect.

Jackson is the owner of Spirit of Hope, and has been running senior sober-living facilities in Carson City for over five years. In July, she was alerted to Joe, who apparently wasn’t doing well at Lyfe Recovery and needed a higher level of care.

“I met Joe on a Friday evening and did a little impromptu interview because I had already decided that no matter what I’d take him,” said Jackson. “We spent an hour talking and he was coherent, but you could tell he had the beginning stages of dementia. He was very pleasant, we talked about his rent and the rules of the house, and he was tracking very well.”

Six days later, when Jackson met Joe again, she found him in critical condition and immediately drove him to the emergency room at Carson Tahoe Hospital. The nurses told her if she hadn’t, he wouldn’t have survived more than a few more hours.

After first interviewing Joe on July 12, Jackson told Lyfe Recovery House Manager Daniel Arnold that she would come back after the weekend and transport him to one of their homes.

The next day, Jackson received a call from Arnold. He said he thought there was something wrong with Joe and that he should go to a hospital.

“I told him, then take him to the hospital,” said Jackson. “He told me he didn’t have a license and didn’t have a way to take him. I told him, call an ambulance.”

According to Jackson, the next time she heard from Arnold, he told her Joe was fine and he ended up not having to go to the hospital.

On Wednesday, July 17, Jackson told Arnold she’d be by the next day to pick up Joe. Arnold told her he had found Joe’s medicine in a hall closet, medication that had been missing since the beginning of July. He thought the other residents in the house had thrown them in the hall closet when Joe arrived to be “vindictive and mean.”

According to Jackson, Arnold told her he’d give Joe his medication that night and the next morning before she came to transport Joe to Spirit of Hope.

“When I came to get him and I noticed he was pretty bad off,” said Jackson. “He was not cognizant, he was incoherent and very unsteady; he couldn’t walk on his own. When I touched him, he felt ice cold. He was slurring his words and he wasn’t hooked up to the oxygen, and the machine was broken. When I pointed it out, (Arnold) said he didn’t know how to use them anyway.”

According to Jackson, Arnold said he had given Joe his medication with some coffee and had made sure he had been eating, drinking, and felt comfortable. None of these things, it turned out, could have been true according to his medical records.

Jackson asked Joe if he remembered her, and he said yes. She said she was going to take him with her, and he said okay, but he couldn’t stand on his own. She asked Arnold to help get him into her car and that she was going to take him to the emergency room at Carson Tahoe Hospital.

“On the way to the hospital, I could see him fading. He had no energy, he was just tired and very placid,” said Jackson.

According to Jackson, when they got to the hospital, the nurses took him into the triage area and tested his vitals. His oxygen was low and his heartbeat irregular, measuring as low as 40 beats per minute; so low that the machine couldn’t get a reading and kept beeping and giving an alert message.

For a man in his 70s, the target zone should have been somewhere between 75 and 128 bpm.

It was determined his internal body temperature was registering at 88 degrees, according to his medical records, and his body was in a state of hypothermia as well as septic shock and kidney failure.

“It was all very calm, there was no hype, and I kept patting him and rubbing his back but from the time I picked him up at the house, I noticed he was failing more and more,” said Jackson.

He was quickly taken into ICU and put into a bed. One of the nurses began throwing warm blankets at Jackson and together they piled them onto Joe’s frail body in an attempt to raise his body temperature.

“He said, ‘oh, that feels good,’ and I said, ‘You’re so cold, you didn’t even realize,’” said Jackson.

His body temperature remained low, and medical staff determined he needed to be placed on a heater, called a “bear hug” according to the medical records, and that’s when Jackson knew things were bad.

According to family members, it was determined he’d suffered a stroke at some point during the last few days, which had caused his tongue to swell to such a point he was incapable of drinking or eating. He was severely dehydrated, was suffering from a severe bladder infection, and the infection had turned to sepsis.

In total, according to his medical report upon intake, he had symptomatic bradycardia (a heart beat less than 50 beats per minute), atrial fibrillation with slow reticular response (an irregular heartbeat), dehydration, urinary tract infection, sepsis, and hypothermia.

The nurses told Jackson he wouldn’t have lasted even a few more hours if she hadn’t brought him in when she did.
With his son, daughter, and ex-wife present, Joe died just after 12 p.m. on July 25.

His death certificate listed four causes of death:

Cardiopulmonary Arrest, Acute Hypoxemic Respiratory Failure, Encephalopathy, and Klebsiella Urinary Tract Infection. Essentially, heart and lung failure, a malfunction within the brain, and a bacterial infection of the urethra that led to septic shock.

In his medical notes, it was recorded that there had been “significant changes” to his health in-between his last check up on May 15, and his intake to the hospital on July 18.

“I have no idea why (Arnold) wouldn’t have called 911,” said Lyfe Recovery Owner Stacey Payne. “He never told me anything was dire. I would have said, call 911. I’ve been doing this for 19 years; if they can’t get to the doctor, you call 911.”

Payne started Lyfe Recovery in 2017, providing sober living houses to addicts and alcoholics in recovery. At one time the company had 12 group-living houses in Nevada.

According to Payne, each facility came with a house manager who made sure clients were staying sober, staying clean, completed their chores, and the manager would write reports on each client to keep a log of their behavior.
Lyfe Recovery became partnered with the Carson City Justice Court through their misdemeanor and felony drug court programs, providing sober living facilities to their clients in transition in an effort to keep them from returning to their previous lives and relapsing.

As of July, Lyfe Recovery had just one home left of the dozen: the Carson City Lyfe Recovery Group Home on North Edmonds, which closed its doors shortly after Joe Tummarello arrived at Carson Tahoe Hospital.

Joe had first come to Lyfe Recovery in May of 2018. He, like so many others who came to Lyfe Recovery for help, was fighting a battle against alcoholism. His son and ex-wife / long time friend (who wished to remain anonymous but their identities and relationship with Joe have been confirmed by Carson Now), lived in South Lake Tahoe, and the altitude was too much for him. Joe suffered from COPD, and the high-altitude mountains air was too thin, according to his son.

At one point, Joe’s son had provided his father a house near Topaz Lake, and everything was good — for a while. His son would visit two or three times a week, but Joe was lonely, and he began drinking again.

“He wasn’t around enough people,” said his son. “He was lonely, he needed a community.”

Joe’s landlord relayed to his son that he was worried about his tenant because Joe had stopped answering the door and paying his rent. His son knew then that Joe needed supervision to be successful with his sobriety.

“When he was sober, he was awesome,” said his son. “If he was drinking, he needed supervision. I’m a single father; I wasn’t equipped to handle it on my own.”

That’s when his son first found Lyfe Recovery and set his father up with their Edmonds House in Carson City for the first of his two stays there.

“He was there for around two months the first time,” his son said. “They really sold me on the program. They said they’d be breathalyzed three times a day, drug tested, and they’d be expected to do their chores and act as good housemates. A woman came to take them to their doctors appointments and to the grocery store. They told me if the clients relapse, they’re out on the street. Everything seemed perfect. He was doing really well.”

When Joe was doing better and was sober, his son brought him back to live with him and his child, and got him set up on oxygen. However, Joe’s sobriety faltered again, and his son found vodka bottles in his home.

Joe then went to California and checked into a nursing home in Anaheim. After a few months, he came back to Reno because he wanted to be closer to his son, ex-wife and grandchild and said he “wasn’t like the people in the nursing home, he wasn’t dying.” He arrived in Reno by bus on April 14 and his ex-wife picked him up and took him to Carson City.

“I told him, let’s take you back to Lyfe Recovery,” his son recalled. “I spoke to the owner, Stacey Payne, who told me it would be the best place for him. She said, ‘you don’t have the facility your dad needs,’ and I said sure, that makes sense. He’d been doing well with them before, going to AA meetings; it seemed like there was structure.”

However, there was no availability in the Edmonds house in Carson City, so instead, Joe was admitted into their group home on Downey Avenue in Reno on April 16, referred to by all parties as the Downey House.

The circumstances, this time, were different.

“We took him to the Downey House and got him set up,” said his son. “I bought him $300 worth of food, and got him settled in. When I first showed up, it was odd. There was no house manager, and the person I spoke to who was my intake contact was one of their patients. But everyone assured me the house manager was in the hospital and would be back in a couple of days.”

Joe’s son gave the residents his cellphone number in case anyone needed to reach him, and told them if anything happened with Joe, whether he relapsed or needed something, they should contact him about it.

“I came by about once a week in the beginning until he was settled,” said his son. After that, they spoke by phone at least once a week and his son would come by whenever he was down from Tahoe, usually about once a month. Joe’s ex-wife spoke to him at least four times on the phone each week, his son said, and would often come along with them to visit.

“The main thing is that (Payne) said there would be transportation to his doctors appointments,” said his son. “As far as I knew, everything was being taken care of.”

Things went on fine for a few months, as far as his son knew.

However, behind the scenes, Lyfe Recovery was unravelling.

Lyfe Recovery

Payne had first founded a sober living home company in the Bay Area in 2013. She had spent time in community living earlier in her life, and wanted to give back. On January 1, 2017, she opened Lyfe Recovery’s first location in Northern Nevada, and it quickly spread throughout Reno and Carson City. She secured a contract with United HealthCare Services (UHC), who funded several of the houses and placed clients with disabilities or clients recovering from illnesses into the homes, usually sourced from the local homeless population.

“We ran about ten houses in Northern Nevada and two in Southern Nevada,” said Payne. “We helped somewhere between 800 to 1,200 people.”

The sober living houses, such as the Edmonds house in Carson City, were Level Two Sober Living facilities under the national standard set out by the National Alliance for Recovery Residences (NARR), according to Payne. Under the UHC contract, they provided “long term comprehensive care” to patients who needed a higher level of medical care and generally suffered from disabilities or illnesses.

“The state spends millions of dollars every year on medical treatment for homeless populations,” said Payne. “The idea was, if we take in these people, we’d be saving UHC money because when people with medical issues are out living on the street, it exacerbates their medical issues. If UHC paid us (to care for their patients), we’d save them money.”

Payne said when Lyfe Recovery received the contract, she was ecstatic. She thought the money would change her life and she could take the business national. She found investors, and a man named Carl Bassett out of Las Vegas purchased the houses and rented them to Lyfe Recovery as sober-living houses and care facilities.

However, the contract between UHC was terminated 9 months later and one by one, the houses began shutting down. Payne said it was because UHC wasn’t paying Lyfe Recovery enough, so she terminated the contract.

UHC could not be reached for comment on why the contract was terminated or where those clients are now.

The last house open in Reno was on Downey Avenue, and they were severely behind on rent after the money from UHC was cut off. Each client paid $750 for their rent in the home each month, said Payne, but it wasn’t enough to keep the house afloat.

According to Payne, Bassett told her unequivocally he would be selling the house and they needed to vacate.

“At the end of June, I went to the house and told everyone: ‘we’re sorry but we have to move out of here,’” said Payne. “They were all freaking out about where they were going to live. Joe didn’t seem to have much of an issue, but I’m not sure if he really comprehended it. I could see he was on oxygen, and we had a nice little chat a few times, but we didn’t get into any medical issues. I didn’t have any information from the house manager that there were any problems. I didn’t even know how old he was; I thought he was in his 40s.”

Payne told the clients of the house they’d need to vacate, and presented the options. “I said, I have availability in Carson. I know you don’t want to move down there but if it’s between that and being homeless, go to Carson. I wasn’t going to force them to be homeless.”

Two of the men left the house and went to stay in a motel. One man, Anthony James Giombetti Sr., known as “Tony”, was a long term client of Lyfe Recovery at the Downey House. After he was told to leave, he relapsed and died of an overdose shortly after. He is survived by his six children and seven grandchildren.

On the last weekend in June, Payne arrived with crews to move furniture out of the house. Joe was the only client left, as the others had found places to stay.

On the third of July, Payne put Joe in an Uber and sent him to the North Edmonds house in Carson City. While packing up the house, Payne found Joe’s food in the pantry. She said she didn’t know how he’d gotten the food since he couldn’t drive, but she assumed he took it with him when she put him in the Uber to Carson City.

No one informed Joe’s family he had been moved, or that the Downey House had even closed.

“I didn’t know a lot about him,” said Payne. “When I was there moving, no one told me he had any family. I’m thinking ‘here’s another sad situation, he’s been abandoned;’ it’s not uncommon in this demographic.”

The Lyfe Recovery facilities use a program called One Step to log their client’s information upon intake which includes names, next of kin, emergency contacts, medication lists, and more. His son was listed in One Step, but no one thought to check or attempt contact while figuring out where to place Joe, according to Payne.

Johna Smith was, until this past spring, the Director of Operations for Lyfe Recovery and now runs the Las Vegas houses that were in Payne’s program as part of a new business after Payne decided to give up Lyfe Recovery’s holdings in southern Nevada.

“There were a lot of issues (with Lyfe Recovery),” said Smith. “One of which was the fact that the house managers weren’t properly entering the intake information. I had to fly up there twice specifically to deal with the issue, and I kept telling Stacey ‘they’re not putting in medication, they’re not putting in emergency contact information.’ It was dangerous.”

Despite these interventions, however, something extremely important fell through the cracks related to Joe: his medication lists were never updated, and when he arrived to the Edmonds House in Carson City, the house manager, Daniel Arnold, had no idea what to do with him.

In Part II of this story, we'll go inside the home where Joe Tummarello spent his last weeks alive with House Manager Daniel Arnold.

To read Part II click here.