Gophers, weeds and sunken headstones: SLO County cemetery neglect ‘a nightmare’ for families
Masses of weeds have replaced grass at one San Luis Obispo County cemetery.
During the rainy season, water pools on many of the headstones, some of which are cracked from heavy machinery or tilted so they point into the air. During dry months, the weeds wilt and expose gopher holes dotting the grounds.
San Luis Obispo attorney Richard Carsel first noticed the issues at Los Osos Valley Memorial Park in 2021 while visiting the grave of his wife, Jan.
“I go out there and I see the headstones covered with mud and weeds,” recalled Carsel, a lay leader who has officiated more than 30 funeral services at the cemetery over the past few decades and buried his wife there in 2021. “There are no words.”
Carsel isn’t the only one who’s frustrated at the state of the burial grounds.
Prompted by complaints made by their congregations, the San Luis Obispo Ministerial Association, a group of local religious leaders, has filed two complaints with the state Cemetery and Funeral Bureau about the deteriorating condition of the cemetery.
On Jan. 31, the bureau issued the cemetery’s owner a $500 fine and ordered it to clean up the grounds.
“To me, it’s just profound disrespect,” said United Church of Christ Pastor Jason Sisk-Provencio, a member of the ministerial group. “These are people’s loved ones, and when they entered into this agreement to have their loved one buried there, they were given a promise that it’s pristine and well-maintained.”
Who owns SLO County cemetery?
Los Osos Valley Memorial Park is one of at least two cemeteries in San Luis Obispo County owned by Dignity Memorial and its parent company, Service Corporation International.
Dignity Memorial acquired the Los Osos cemetery in 2014, according to SCI market director Marc Johnson.
The company also owns Chapel of the Roses Cemetery in Atascadero, according to its website.
“Since we are an endowment care cemetery, you can be confident that the cemetery grounds and memorial spaces will be meticulously maintained into the future,” the website says.
The Los Osos cemetery has a two-star rating on review site Yelp, where folks routinely complain about gopher holes, overgrown weeds and damaged headstones.
In July 2021, Yelp user Rozanne K. said she considered disinterring her mother and stepfather after visiting their graves at Los Osos Valley Memorial Park.
“I went to visit my mom’s headstone (we live out of town) and was so dismayed I sat in the car and cried,” she wrote on Yelp. “Why they still do burials and take people’s money is horrible.”
In June 2022, Yelp user Nancy N. said she wished she buried her husband somewhere else.
“It is disgraceful how they have let the place go,” she wrote. “Gophers covering all the headstones, grass overgrowing everything, tractor marks on the headstones, flower vases destroyed.”
Carsel blames SCI for allowing the cemetery to fall into disrepair by prioritizing profit over upkeep of the grounds.
“What we got here is a case study in corporate greed,” Carsel said. “SCI is ruthless and heartless.”
SCI is one of the largest funeral home corporations in North America — responsible for more than 1,900 locations, according to the company’s website.
“What’s happening in Los Osos is not a one-off,” Carsel said.
“When it becomes a large corporation, you lose those ties with people. It’s a bottom line,” Deis said. “It was no longer the old fashioned mom-and-pop (business) where the family is important.”
Families speak out about Los Osos cemetery: ‘It was a nightmare’
In March 2022, Renee Maler drove from her home in Los Angeles to Los Osos to visit the grave of her son, Jordan.
When Maler arrived at Los Osos Valley Memorial Park at sunset, she found a mound of dirt covering her son’s headstone.
“The first thing that crossed my mind (was that) ... somebody had exhumed his body,” said Maler, whose son, a Cal Poly graduate, died in 2019. “I went into some level of panic and shock.”
Maler left a voicemail for the funeral director, then used her hands to dig out the rest of the grave to confirm that her son’s body was still there.
“It was absolutely traumatizing,” Maler said. “It’s already hard enough to be in a cemetery alone by yourself at night.”
She said a cemetery employee called her that evening to explain that a gopher caused the damage to the grave site.
“It was a nightmare.” Maler said. “I was pretty upset. I didn’t understand how if they knew that there was a gopher issue, that they wouldn’t have contacted the affected families so that they would be prepared if they were coming to walk in.”
An employee told Maler that the cemetery would install a mesh protector between the headstone and the grave to prevent the gophers from burrowing up and disturbing the soil on top of the grave.
Maler reluctantly agreed, noting that “it still means that there’s scope for issues below where you’ve buried your loved ones.”
“I was so devastated at that point, I just wanted to know that everything was going to be fixed,” Maler said.
Maler planned to visit her son’s grave in November for the three-year anniversary of his death, but she “couldn’t go back,” she said.
“I was so afraid of what I might see,” Maler said. “I was scared that I would get there and there would be another problem.”
Maler isn’t the only person distressed by damage to the cemetery grounds.
Evelyn Plemons buried her father at Los Osos Valley Memorial Park in 1988, and then her mother in 1998.
At that time, ”everything was really green and beautiful,” Plemons said.
In 2018, Plemons returned to the Los Osos cemetery to bury her sister. She noticed then that the granite base of her father’s headstone had cracked, and weeds were growing across the grounds.
“I was stunned at the condition, how bad it had been let go,” Plemons said.
When she returned to the cemetery in May 2022, she said, it looked like the ground had swallowed her parents’ shared headstone. It was completely covered in mud and weeds, Plemons said.
Her sister’s headstone was smeared with dirt, she said.
“It was heartbreaking to see most of my family ... being treated like that,” Plemons said. “The only consolation I could think of ... is, well, at least they’re 6 feet under. They can’t see this.”
“It used to be a beautiful, serene place where you could go visit your loved ones,” Plemons said of Los Osos Valley Memorial Park. “Now, it’s totally desecrated and like a mud pit.”
California orders cemetery to clean up burial grounds
The San Luis Obispo Ministerial Association first filed a complaint with the California Cemetery and Funeral Bureau in January 2022 that was investigated by field inspector Steve Caulk, according to Carsel, who serves as the group’s secretary.
Caulk issued a report on Jan. 20, 2022, noting that the cemetery violated state code law due to its lack of gopher control and failure to mow the lawn and remove weeds.
The bureau then issued the cemetery a $100 fine, and ordered the cemetery to correct the violations by Feb. 3, 2022 — just one week after the report was issued, Carsel said.
State law also requires the cemetery to repair grave markers and “refill or reset settled graves,” but Caulk’s report didn’t mention that — even though Carsel said many of the headstones were damaged.
On Jan. 29, 2022, cemetery general manager Christopher Strickler signed a form stating that he corrected the violations.
On June 1, 2022, the SLO Ministerial Group submitted another complaint to the bureau about the lack of improvement to the cemetery grounds, which was also investigated by Caulk.
The Cemetery and Funeral Bureau fined the cemetery $500 on Jan. 31 for its continued negligence.
The bureau also ordered the cemetery to “immediately take such action as may be necessary to achieve full compliance with all provisions of the Cemetery and Funeral Act, Health and Safety Code, and regulations adopted by the bureau.”
The order said that the cemetery violated the California Code of Regulations 2333, which requires cemeteries to trim the grass so flat grave markers are visible, remove weeds, and control vermin and insects.
Cemetery maintenance must “ensure the property is kept in a condition so as to prevent the cemetery’s offensive deterioration,” according to the code.
Still, the order did not list what specific actions the cemetery needs to take to comply with California law.
“It’s unclear what they’re supposed to abate,” Carsel said.
He also feels that the $500 fine isn’t high enough for a company valued at $15 billion.
Carsel said that the Cemetery and Funeral Bureau is neglecting its duty to protect the public by issuing an unenforceable order of abatement.
“It’s absolutely outrageous,” Carsel said. “They have proven by this action that they’re not going to protect the public, so if we want to get the cemetery fixed, we have to recognize that the Bureau of Cemeteries — which has jurisdiction — is not gonna do it.”
Carsel is doubtful that the cemetery’s owners will follow the bureau’s second order to clean up the grounds — because they didn’t follow the bureau’s first order, he said.
“Why would the cemetery spend any money?” Carsel asked.
Strickler told The Tribune on Feb. 15 that he was “unaware” of the order of abatement.
Cemetery owner, manager respond to accusations of neglect
Both complaints were filed after Strickler came aboard as general manager of the Los Osos cemetery in 2021.
Johnson, the SCI executive, told The Tribune in an emailed statement that he visited Los Osos Valley Memorial Park in March 2020 and was “embarrassed” by the state of the grounds, prompting the company to hire Strickler.
Since then, Strickler said he’s worked to improve the grounds.
“We’ve made incredible progress in making Los Osos Valley Memorial Park a beautiful, serene place where families can visit to honor their loved one,” Strickler wrote in a Feb. 15 email.
According to Strickler, the cemetery implemented “seasonal seeding, placing sod where (it) is needed, performing irrigation repairs promptly when needed, and investing in new equipment,” he wrote in an email.
The cemetery hired a “licensed professional” to remove gophers, Strickler said, and the cemetery works individually with families to repair headstones when requested.
“Chris Strickler, our general manager, has been in his role a little over a year,” Johnson said in the statement. “I think he deserves a little grace and time to bring the park totally up to standard.”
On May 9, 2022, Strickler wrote in an email to Plemons that it would take about seven years with a maintenance crew of three people to repair 7,500 damaged headstones. Carsel forwarded the email to The Tribune.
The memorial park employs three groundspeople, and Strickler told The Tribune in his Feb. 15 email that he is actively interviewing to hire more.
When people pay to bury their loved ones at the Los Osos cemetery, a portion of their funds are allocated into an endowment care fund that is supposed to be use to maintain the grounds, Carsel said.
“I paid good money for perpetual care to go into an endowment care fund. I’m not getting professional care. I have a disaster on my hands,” Carsel said. “That’s fraud. They took money under false pretenses.”
In a meeting with the SLO Ministerial Association on May 24, 2022, Strickler reportedly told the group that “SCI treats each cemetery as its own profit center. So if we’re going to restore the cemetery, we have to do it out of revenues that we generate,” Carsel said.
When The Tribune asked whether SCI would help fund repairs at the Los Osos cemetery, Strickler didn’t answer.
“Cemeteries are always a work in progress — let me be absolutely clear about that,” Strickler told The Tribune in a Feb. 3 email. “I’m very pleased with the park now, and I think it’s something the community can take pride in.”
What’s next?
According to Cemetery and Funeral Bureau spokesperson Peter Fournier, the cemetery has 30 days to pay the $500 fine. There is no deadline for the cemetery to implement the order of abatement to clean up the grounds, Fournier said.
If a cemetery doesn’t comply with an order of abatement, the bureau can commission the Attorney General’s Office to prosecute the cemetery for evading the order, according to Fournier.
Constituents have complained to California State Sen. John Laird’s Office about the cemetery, and his office has worked to share those concerns with the bureau, according to spokesperson Kara Woodruff.
“For people who have loved ones there, it’s been a really emotional issue,” Woodruff told The Tribune. “I’ve heard from a couple of constituents that they went to go view their headstones of loved ones, and they weren’t able to get to those because of some of the other problems like the uneven grass areas or the rodent damage.”
Woodruff said the fine and order of abatement were a step in the right direction.
“It really did call into question some of the maintenance issues on the cemetery, so that’s encouraging,” Woodruff said.
Laird’s office will keep an eye on the cemetery to ensure that it complies with the order, Woodruff said, noting that this isn’t the cemetery’s first citation.
“I would think on the second opportunity they really have a chance to respond positively and turn this around,” Woodruff said. “We’ll definitely be watching, and depending on how they proceed, we’ll take it from there.”
According to Carsel, there are at least three ways to motivate SCI to repair the Los Osos Valley Memorial Park.
First, the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors could sue the cemetery for creating a public nuisance, and order them to clean up the grounds so the cemetery is in compliance with state law, Carsel said.
“The cemetery is in the county. Is open to the public. It’s treacherous for elderly people or people who have impaired mobility to traverse the grounds,” Carsel said. “That’s what I would call a public nuisance.”
Second, the San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office or California Attorney General’s Office could sue the cemetery for consumer fraud.
Carsel noted that the cemetery’s website features photos of a manicured lawn in the Veteran’s Section.
In the picture, “there’s no gopher holes, and no weeds and all the headstones are legible,” Carsel said. “That’s not the way it is.”
Finally, state legislatures can create legislation to restructure the Bureau of Cemeteries to have its own enforcement arm, complete with an in-house counsel, Carsel said.
“The goal is to get the cemetery restored and get legislation at the state level to protect the public so that this never happens again,” Carsel said. “I’m counting on people of good faith in elected office to protect us.”
This story was originally published February 26, 2023 at 5:30 AM.
