‘She’s not dying in vain’: Husband honors wife killed in SLO County knife attack
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Suspect Fritz Schnoor had prior threats, arrests and broken restraining orders.
- Victim’s family urges legislative reform in mental health and justice systems.
- Cynthia Giambalvo remembered for her giving character.
Anyone who didn’t get to meet Cynthia Giambalvo “missed out big time,” her husband, Joseph Giambalvo, said.
“Everyone that she ever met, it was like being instant friends,” he recalled. “She never had a mean bone in her body.”
Late Thursday evening, an attacker broke into the Giambalvos home through a stained-glass window and stabbed each of the Giambalvos several times.
Despite best efforts from first responders and emergency personnel, 74-year-old Cynthia died of her injuries. Joseph, 71, survived thanks to a tourniquet placed on him by an Arroyo Grande police officer, he told The Tribune during an interview at his house on Tuesday.
The suspect, 35-year-old Fritz Galen Schnoor of Oceano, has a long history of mental illness and had targeted the Giambalvos before, Joseph said.
Court records show Schnoor broke into the Gimbalvos’ home with a knife and “intent to harm” them in 2017. Schnoor had broken the restraining order the Giambalvos had against him at least once, records show.
At a hearing on Tuesday, San Luis Obispo Superior Court Judge Barry LaBarbera declared a doubt into Schnoor’s competency to stand trial for murder, attempted murder and burglary charges, meaning Schnoor will be evaluated by mental health professionals who will determine whether he can understand the charges he has against him.
If he is found incompetent, he will receive mental health treatment until his competency is restored and criminal proceedings can resume.
Attack was preventable, victim says
Schnoor has a well-documented history of severe mental illness that led to criminal charges, dating back to 2011, when he threatened to rape and kill a Santa Margarita woman.
At times, his condition improved, to the extent he even graduated from Behavioral Health Treatment Court in 2014.
“I feel good,” he even told The Tribune in an interview at the time. “My mental health is under control now.”
But the upswing didn’t last long, and by 2017, Schnoor developed a fixation on the Giambalvos that would last for the next eight years, Joseph and his daughter Laura told The Tribune.
The incidents in 2017 prompted Joseph to install bulletproof glass to his sliding door, raise his fence and install several security cameras.
“We did everything to protect ourselves,” Joseph said.
Joseph and Laura told The Tribune they believe the deadly home invasion was preventable, because Schnoor had a documented history of threatening them and acting on it.
But the criminal justice system charged him with misdemeanors that came with short jail time, while the mental health system allowed him to be released from his LPS conservatorship in 2022.
LPS conservatorships place those deemed “gravely disabled” due to severe mental illness into the custody of the Public Guardian’s Office, which works to ensure the person receives proper care.
Court records show Schnoor entered into conservatorship by the Public Guardian’s Office in 2019 following his crimes against the Giambalvos. The Public Guardian’s Office filed a withdrawal of Schnoor’s conservatorship in 2022, and Schnoor was released to his mother’s custody, records show.
Because the documents contain private health information, records regarding why the conservatorship was withdrawn and how the public guardian chose who should have custody of Schnoor cannot be viewed.
Schnoor’s whereabouts since he was released to his mother’s custody are also unclear from publicly available records. Due to privacy laws, neither the California Department of State Hospitals nor San Luis Obispo County Behavioral Health can confirm or deny whether Schnoor has ever been a patient or stayed at a facility.
The Giambalvos said they were not notified when their restraining order expired, nor when Schnoor was released from his conservatorship.
“There needs to be better systems in place to protect people,” Laura said. “He was catered to. He got let back out. He got a slap on the wrist every time he did something wrong, and he was very open about his intentions.”
Joseph said he hopes what happened to him and his wife can inspire legislative change in the mental health and criminal justice systems.
“She’s not dying in vain,” Joseph said of his wife. “We need to change the laws. ... She’s going to help save other lives from this tragedy.”
Emergency services cleaner was ‘like an angel,’ victim says
Joseph was in the hospital recovering from his injuries for three days before returning to his house in Arroyo Grande.
Laura wasn’t sure about returning to the house, but for Joseph, it’s his home.
The stained-glass window “where that gentleman ruined my life” was still boarded up, but the mess of the crime scene was completely cleaned.
Laura was in Washington when she got the call from her father that he and Cynthia had been attacked. Her father didn’t have his phone, but he told her to get a hold of family, and he let her know there was blood all over the house that needed to be cleaned up.
A District Attorney’s Office investigator connected Laura with Guy Gonzales, owner of Lighthouse Keepers 805, which provides cleaning for emergency services in addition to restoration and cleanup for mold and water damage.
Gonzales, Joesph said, was “like an angel landed on our shoulders.”
He took care of cleaning up the crime scene after investigators finished collecting evidence. When the insurance agent was asking Laura where exactly blood was in the house, Gonzales offered to speak to the insurance agent directly so that Laura didn’t have to.
“He took such a burden off of me,” Laura said.
Meanwhile, the community support for the Giambalvos has been nonstop, Joseph and Laura said. People have dropped off meals, flowers and cards.
When her father was in the hospital, Laura said, he had a line of people waiting down the hall to see him.
“My dad is a very humble man,” she said. “He’s going on and on about all these people, and I said, ‘All these people came because you’re a great person.’”
Her dad shrugged it off, she said, “but it’s true. If he wasn’t who he is, he wouldn’t have this outpouring of support. Same with Cindy — if they weren’t the giving people that they are, this constant flow of love and condolences wouldn’t be here.”
Arroyo Grande couple married for 43 years
When Joseph recalled his wife of 43 years, the first thing he talked about was how she was always there for him, his daughter and the people around them.
The two met in Avila Beach — the old Avila, he clarified, before it was remodeled. She was working in Cal Poly’s textbook department while he was working at Farm Supply.
The secret to their 43 years of marriage? Never go to bed mad, Joseph said. He and his wife always talked through problems so that they could go to bed with a smile on their face.
Cynthia was “meticulously organized,” Laura said. When she worked at the Cal Poly bookstore, Joseph said, she went through used textbook pages by hand to make sure the quality was good enough for students.
When the two would go on a trip, she wouldn’t let Joseph pack his own suitcase, he recalled with a laugh. She would roll up their clothes for each day so that both of their clothes could fit in one suitcase.
Laura and her husband are in the process of building a house in Washington. When Cynthia and Joseph visited recently, Laura and her husband were pouring concrete for the garage.
Cynthia has “never been very agile,” Laura recalled, and on that day, a hose blew off of a water truck, causing a “gigantic spray of water.”
Guide lines marked the area where concrete was mean to go, and with the hose dousing her, Cynthia had to high step through all of the strings.
“She was such a trooper about it,” Laura said with a laugh. “She even said, ‘I didn’t know I could move like that.’”
It’s a silly memory that is now one of Laura’s favorites.
Above all, the two wanted Cynthia to be remembered for how giving she was to everyone she met.
Once she retired from Cal Poly, she began volunteering with St. Patrick’s Church and the Empty Bowls luncheon with 5Cities Homeless Coalition. She was constantly helping others, Joseph and Laura said.
“She never had a mean bone in her body, and she never had any hate,” Joseph said, before quipping that she even put up with his cooking for 43 years.
That’s one of Cynthia’s characteristics that Laura is trying to channel, Laura said.
Cynthia wouldn’t want to be hateful toward Schnoor — she probably wouldn’t even say anything bad about him, Laura said.
“Cindy was robbed of a peaceful ending to her life that she very much deserved,” Laura said. “He took that away from her. She lived her last moments in fear and pain, and that’s not fair.”
This story was originally published September 24, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
