Residents and family members speak highly of the care at the senior living facility. Providing that care has lost the nonprofit running the Casey’s Pond $36.9 million since 2013.
Caption: Vance Noel, left, his sister Dina Fisher and their mother, right, pose for a photo in Noel's Room at the Doak Walker House At Casey's Pond. Noel and other residents at the Doak have been told where they live is closing by Oct. 27. (Dylan Anderson/The Yampa Valley Bugle)
Dina Fisher knew she had to get her brother out of there.
It was a nursing facility in Southern California near the Mexico border. Her brother Vance Noel had suffered a traumatic brain injury after a fall — “He’s completely cognizant, he just can’t talk very well because of his brain injury.”
Noel had been packed into a room with five other people, five different televisions blaring. The curtain around his bed was broken — restricted from closing all the way. His care was so bad, Fisher said she was the first to notice his urine had turned a rust color during one visit. She got him to the hospital herself.
Once admitted, Fisher knew she couldn’t let her brother go back there. They found another nursing facility in San Deigo. It was better than the last, but still not ideal.
“They wouldn’t allow him to walk,” Fisher said. “They left him on a feeding tube.”
Fisher then started the yearlong process to switch Noel’s Medicaid from California to Colorado. She monitored Casey’s Pond for more than six months waiting for an available bed. When one opened up, she didn’t wait to start moving her brother across the country.
“This is amazing care,” Fisher said of her brother’s experience at the Doak Walker Skilled Nursing House at Casey’s Pond, a statement echoed by half a dozen other residents and family members interviewed by The Yampa Valley Bugle in recent days. “The quality of care is I would say, a five-star care. It’s not that it’s five-star accommodations, it’s the best care.”
There was no sales pitch from Casey’s Pond as Fisher worked to move her brother to Steamboat Springs, where Fisher has lived for 37 years, eventually raising her family a blocks away in the Whistler Neighborhood. When Fisher moved her brother to town in 2022, she had been told nothing of potential financial struggle for the senior living community.
Publicly-available records reviewed by The Bugle show Casey’s Pond has been bleeding cash since the year it opened — $36.9 million in total since 2013. That first year was the most profitable for the Casey’s Pond, with records showing it only lost $1.3 million. In the 10-year period since being open for which records are available, Casey’s Pond has reported losses of more than $4 million five different times.
Fisher learned of financial trouble in a July letter to residents announcing receivership. Her brother and the other Doak Walker House residents will be moved out by Oct. 27, as the skilled nursing facility is closed.
“Those are the only people who have been asked to leave — the sickest and the poorest,” Fisher said.
The Doak Walker House traces back earlier than Casey’s Pond, and the community has invested in a nursing facility since as early as in the 1940s. Named after Heisman Trophy winner Doak Walker, the house became part of Casey’s Pond in 2013 after decades as part of Yampa Valley Medical Center.
Fisher said the community has recognized the importance of having a nursing home like the Doak and has supported it for decades, highlighting a difference between Doak and Casey’s Pond. She said the community doesn’t fully understand what it will lose if the Doak Walker House closes.
“Moose Barrows was a personal friend of mine,” Fisher said, mentioning the Steamboat Skiing legend who died in June. “Moose was part of this community and helped shape this community. … He had a place to come and die in his own community, he didn’t have to die in Denver because we have this place.”
‘Red flags flying’
Caption: Dina Fisher helps her brother Vance straighten up his room at the Doak Walker House at Casey's Pond. Unlike the hotel-like lobby, Fisher says where her brother lives has pretty typical accommodations for a nursing home. (Dylan Anderson/The Yampa Valley Bugle)
Casey’s Pond is owned by a 501(c)(3) non-profit called Colorado Senior Residences Inc, which makes yearly 990 filings to the Internal Revenue Service.
Accessed through a database created by ProPublica, a review of these 990 filings shows Casey’s Pond has struggled to make enough money to cover the cost of care and pay off construction debts. In 2013, the first year in operation, the nonprofit reported a loss of $1.3 million, and the hole would only get deeper.
Records show the next three years were particularly tough, with the facility losing $4.4 million, $4.8 million and $4.9 million respectively in the years from 2014 to 2016. Review of these records show these losses are greater than the amount of interest listed as expenses on the 990 forms for each year. Without the debt on the books, Casey’s Pond still lost money.
“These losses were due primarily to actual occupancy being lower than what was projected in the original feasibility study,” reads a financial report of Casey’s Pond dated Dec. 31, 2022, though the report mentions events after that date.
The next two years would see some improvement, with losses declining to $3.9 million and $2.9 million in 2017 and 2018, a change that the 2022 Financial Report says stemmed from efficiencies gained after the hiring of a new manager in 2016. Still, the financial performance continued to fall short of debt obligations, the financial report says.
Losses would increase again in 2019 to just over $4 million and in 2020 to $4.5 million, the records show. 2021 saw some improvement, with losses declining to $3.4 million.
“These factors raise substantial doubt about Casey’s Pond’s ability to continue as a going concern,” the financial reports in 2022 says. “Management acknowledges that, in its current financial situation, Casey’s Pond would be unable to meet its obligations.”
In Oct. 2021, Casey’s Pond entered into an amended and restated forbearance agreement, but the senior living community was out of compliance with those terms by December of that year, according to the report. The forbearance agreement was amended again in April of 2023 and required Casey’s Pond to use its best efforts to market and sell the senior living facility.
“Substantial doubt remains regarding the ability of Casey’s Pond to continue as a going concern during the following year,” the 2022 report says.
Expenses allocated to interest accounts for $30 million of the $36.9 million in losses between 2013 and 2022. In 2022, the most recent year for which records are available, Casey’s Pond’s losses ($2.7 million) were less than expenses due to interest ($3.3 million).
Contact information for board members of Casey’s Pond is not made available on its website. The Bugle made numerous unsuccessful attempts to reach board members over the weekend. On Sunday evening, Board Treasurer Karl Gills responded to an email sent earlier that day saying he would need more time to “give thoughtful perspective and context to a very complex situation,” but said he may have input for a follow up story.
Routt County Commissioner Tim Redmond said he is frustrated it has taken this long for the community to learn about Casey’s Pond’s financial struggles.
“Why didn’t we, nine years ago, get together and look at this situation and work then to try to solve this?” Redmond asked. “Now, we’re calling the fire department when the house is fully engaged. I find that a little frustrating. … It seems to me there have been red flags flying for quite a while.”
‘The solution is money’
Caption: Anders Anderson visits with his sister Teri, who lives at The Grove at Casey's Pond. Anderson says if Teri is forced to leave Casey's Pond, he would need to follow her. (Dylan Anderson/The Yampa Valley Bugle)
Steamboat Springs City Council will meet Tuesday for another conversation about how to respond to the situation. Options on the table include allocating short-term rental taxes to a plan to try to save Casey’s Pond or even approaching the city’s voters with a ballot question in November.
“The solution is money,” said Council member Joella West in an interview on Sunday. “How much money? It is always a matter of negotiation.”
West is part of an ad-hoc committee that has formed to try to save Casey’s Pond. This committee includes representatives from the city, Routt County, Northwest Colorado Health, UCHealth Yampa Valley Medical Center, Yampa Valley Housing Authority and the Yampa Valley Community Foundation. West said members of Casey’s Pond’s board have not been included in the committee’s discussions.
A few weeks ago, the committee sent an offer to Receiver Bellann Raile of Cordes & Company, LLC, but it was rejected. West said the committee has another meeting planned for Monday morning.
“We’re going to talk about some other possibilities that seem to be developing,” West said. “It’s way too early in that process for me to say to you, well, it’s this, it’s this or it’s this, because we really don’t know yet. The whole committee has not heard this.”
Council’s meeting for Tuesday includes an option executive session allowing members to discuss specifics behind closed doors. West said the committee has also been working with state and federal elected leaders, and Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet in particular has been involved.
“If you ask me if I am more optimistic about it now then I was two weeks ago, I am. That doesn’t mean I have the solution in my pocket," West said. "It just means that I think we have a better chance of finding a solution and maybe finding a solution soon enough that fewer people are going to get moved out of there in anticipation of that October deadline.”
‘He would fight for me’
Caption: A map of the state of Colorado in the hallway at Casey's Pond shows where residents have been transferred, following news that the senior living community went into receivership last month. (Dylan Anderson/The Yampa Valley Bugle)
Anders Anderson wasn’t worried about his sister Teri until he got a call from a longtime friend of hers who said she had stopped answering her phone. When finally able to get ahold of his sister, Anderson said she said she was seeing other people in her home.
Anderson and his other sister each traveled to New Jersey, where Teri had been placed in a 21-day psychiatric hold at the hospital. When they got her home, it was clear she could not live on her own anymore.
“It looks just like our sister,” Anderson said. “She doesn’t look like she is in distress, she doesn’t look like she is in trouble.”
Anderson and his other sister where able to get Teri into nursing home in New Jersey and hired a law firm to act as an advocate for her. Once she was set up there, Anderson’s next priority was to get her to Steamboat and Casey’s Pond.
“Getting her here ... it was going to be good and I would be able to learn something about this disease,” Anderson said.
Teri has been in the Grove Assisted Living at Casey’s Pond since May of 2022. Anderson says his sister has gotten excellent care, that staff at Casey’s Pond are really good about calling with any updates and that she has several favorite staff members.
Residents in the Grove have not been told they need to move out at this point, but Anderson is worried about that possibility. Currently, Anderson is able to visit his sister multiple times a week. If she would need to move, Anderson says he would need to move with her.
“Teri can’t be over in Craig, she can’t be at The Haven over in Hayden,” said Anderson, who lives in Sleepy Bear Mobile Home Park. “Even that far away is another hour, so I can’t visit like I can visit here. If I have to take her somewhere else, I’ll move there, because I’m not going to leave her alone.”
Fisher, who’s brother Vance is in the Doak Walker Home, is contemplating the same scenario as the Oct. 27 deadline for Doak to close approaches. Her brother has a quality of life in Steamboat that he wouldn’t have anywhere else, she said.
“My son, we brought him home from the hospital where we live, my first. He’s 25 now,” Fisher said. “For me it would be really hard to say I have to uproot my family to try and accommodate and get [Vance] good care, but we’re literally looking at his quality of life will be nothing.”
Fisher likened the need for a nursing home in a community to the need for an elementary school. If the community lacked such an essential service, she said it would look to their city leaders to address the problem. Fisher spoke at city council last week urging leaders to consider potential zoning changes to prevent the use of Casey’s Pond from changing.
On Sunday, she said she would keep advocating for her brother and residents at the Doak Walker House, many of whom are on Medicaid. Three months before her brother’s brain injury, Fisher was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer.
“He was my rock when I was going through cancer, he was the one that called me all the time, every day to say ‘you got this sis,’” Fisher said. “I just know if it was me, he would fight for me to be in a place that is good for me.”
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