Trini woman fights for survival

NEW YORK: A 78-year-old Trinidadian woman who migrated to New York 45 years ago, is at the centre of an investigation into one of her two nursing homes. Ruby Weston, a grandmother and well-known figure in Brooklyn’s Caribbean community, has grown rich on two taxpayer-supported nursing homes she runs, one of  them under state investigation for possible financial improprieties. The story was carried in yesterday’s New York Daily News. Weston’s salary at the 295-bed Marcus Garvey Nursing Home in Crown Heights is an eye-popping $565,450, with tens of thousands of dollars more in perks, according to the not-for-profit’s tax return for 2002.

Her lawyer, Richard Greenberg, said her compensation package stayed “roughly the same” for 2003 and 2004 — but her contract calls for 10 percent yearly cost-of-living raises. Lawsuits and complaints also have been lodged by at least three families whose frail elders were or are patients at Ruby Weston Manor, including the mother of New York Knicks coach Lenny Wilkens. Henrietta Wilkens, 87, had been living at the modern, 280-bed facility in East New York until last May, when she was rushed to the hospital for emergency stomach surgery. Wilkens’ two daughters told the Daily News they were adamant about not returning their mother to Ruby Weston Manor after the surgery. She is on a ventilator and feeding tube at a rehabilitation centre.

“I wouldn’t recommend Ruby Weston Manor to anyone,” said Wilkens’ elder daughter, Connie. “They don’t have the proper things that elderly people need. Poor people laying there can’t even eat their food. I used to go over there every day and cut her meat for her.” Lenny Wilkens, who was at his mother’s bedside over Christmas, declined comment. In interviews and in his autobiography, the soft-spoken NBA Hall of Famer has lovingly characterised his mother as a hardworking Irish-Catholic woman who devoted her life to raising her children in Bedford-Stuyvesant after their father died when Lenny was five. Star Sharp, a Queens nurse, filed a negligence suit against Weston Manor over the care of her aunt, Lucille  Jones, who died in June at age 84.

Jones, who had Alzheimer’s, had to have her right leg amputated above the knee after medical staff allegedly failed to see a simple sore that became infected. “I wouldn’t put my dog there,” said an anguished Sharp. Like many nursing home owners in the state, Weston has amassed personal fortune from taxpayers through payments from Medicaid, the government programme for the poor. Her contract also provided that Marcus Garvey Nursing Home pay for a new car of her choice every two years, the monthly maintenance payment and furnishings for her Brooklyn Heights co-op, health club and private club memberships and a retirement package in excess of $1 million. In 1995 the home’s board of directors — made up of several long-time friends of Weston’s — awarded her a $500,000 bonus for starting up construction of a new nursing home in East New York, which was later named for her.

Reacting to Weston’s compensation, Richard Mollet, associate director of the Long Term Care Community Coalition, an advocacy group, said: “So many facilities across the state are cutting down on staffing, complaining they don’t have the money to hire, when, in fact, as we see here, there is plenty of money to lavish overpaid executives and their family.” Colleen Roche, a public relations consultant for Weston’s homes, said: “Both the Marcus Garvey Nursing Home, where Ms Weston serves as CEO, and the Ruby Weston Manor, where she is the administrator, are cooperating fully with the attorney general, who is conducting a civil inquiry. “We are confident that the conclusion of this inquiry will vindicate the leadership of Ms. Weston and the dedicated colleagues with whom she works.”

Weston herself failed to return several calls over the past month. The Daily News has learned that Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s office issued subpoenas to the seven board members of the Garvey Home, as well as to Weston’s son, Earl, who was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to service the nursing home’s computers. “The investigation is ongoing,” said Brad Maione, a spokesman for Spitzer. Asked whether Ruby Weston Manor will be looked into as well, Maione said: “We will go where the information takes us.” A News review of hundreds of pages of internal documents, public records and interviews with former and current nursing home staff and board members revealed an insular world where Weston rules with an iron hand. She controls the purse strings at both homes, and has employed several family members over the years. Records obtained by the Daily News showed that as recently as last summer, months after they were ordered, wheelchairs, recliners, suction pumps, thermometers and blankets were still on order.

Those who know Weston say she is a savvy businesswoman who immigrated here from Trinidad some 45 years ago. She studied to became a nurse and raised five children, including a daughter who is a Brooklyn state Supreme Court justice. The nursing homes are her life. For relaxation, she plays the slot machines in Atlantic City, a family member says. Those close to Weston say she is deeply disturbed by the suggestions of impropriety. “When you say to anybody in the nursing home industry, ‘Ruby Weston,’ they say, “Oh, my God, she is the best in the business,’” said Jennifer Joseph, who has known Weston for 15 years and is a former administrator and director at the Garvey home. But for the families of some of those under care at Weston Manor, the investigation is welcome.

Da’Shawn Gables has been heartsick over the care her grandmother, Annie Bell Callahan, has received at Ruby Weston Manor. She is suing the facility. Callahan, a warm and popular woman who worked as a Family Court janitor for 35 years, was 82 when she was stricken with Alzheimer’s. Ruby Weston Manor was closest to Gables’ home. “It was clean, everyone was friendly and made us feel comfortable, and the first two years were good,” Gables said. But then about two years ago, she said, the quality of  care declined. Callahan’s clothes started disappearing, as did her false teeth and eyeglasses, which the home refused to replace, Gables said. Then the rashes began. On March 6, Callahan fell and broke her hip — because the guard rails had not been put up on her bed,  according to Gable and her attorney, Jacob Fuchsberg. Callahan, who is also diabetic, had to stay in a hospital for ten days and is now confined to a wheelchair. “I love my grandmother to death,” Gables said. “I wish I could take care of her myself. When I go to bed at night, I wonder if she is okay. She sits in a wheelchair all day and says nothing.”