Mary Patricio is the owner of Mary's Little Lambs, LLC. She hires caregivers to provide in-home…read morecare for seniors and has been operating this business without a home care agency license for two years, which is illegal in the state of California. She also works as a caregiver herself without a license, which is illegal in the state of California.
In 2024, I informed my brother that Mary was illegally not paying her employees overtime, and running her business without the license. My brother fired her and hired an agency to provide caregivers to my dad for the last year of his life.
In my opinion, she was emotionally abusive of her employees, and they were too afraid to say anything about it, to me or my brother, because they were afraid of her.
She fired her pregnant daughter as a caregiver for absolutely no reason related to the quality of her daughter's caregiving. She was an amazing caregiver and wanted to keep working for my dad, and her mother fired her.
She also arranged the shifts so one particular caregiver that she did not like would not be able to work, instead of just outright firing her. This happened about a month before my brother terminated the contract with her and hired the agency.
This caregiver was a very hard worker and an amazing caregiver. She would work nonstop on her shifts, cleaning and picking up the slack from other caregivers - including Mary, who would not complete all of her duties. The caregiver told me that Mary said to her: "Don't work so hard. Do the bare minimum." This is outrageous for an owner of a caregiving company to tell their employee.
My father wanted to keep Mary on as a caregiver even after we hired the agency to do most of the shifts, I think because he had an emotional attachment to her. So she continued to work as a caregiver for my dad doing 3-4 twelve hour shifts per week.
Not only was she not warm and friendly like the other caregivers, and not only did she do the bare minimum the job required each shift, but she also physically and emotionally abused my father in June of this year.
He told me that she was "rough" with him, "jerked" him while helping him stand up and move around, and was "mean" to him during one of her night shifts. My dad was wheelchair bound and needed assistance standing up, walking, using the bathroom, and doing other activities of daily living - and he told me that when he asked her to help him get up out of bed and go to the kitchen, she said, "I don't think you need to do that, John," and did not help him get up. This is neglect and abuse and my father recognized it. He recognized that she was physically abusive and that how she spoke to him was emotionally abusive. However, he wanted to continue to have her work as a caregiver because he had an emotional attachment to her.
He was afraid of this woman and asked me to stay overnight in his house for two nights because he was fearful of what she would do. I stayed upstairs in the guest bedroom where I could hear everything going on in his room.
After that night in June, she was on her best behavior for a few months, but it didn't last long. A couple months ago my dad wanted to fire her as a caregiver (she was doing 3-4 twelve hours shifts a week) because her behavior was changing again for the worse. However, he still kept her on as his personal assistant and household manager.
But two weeks before he died, he asked me to find someone to replace her for this role. I was interviewing other people right before he got sick and had to go to the hospital. He died in the hospital on December 9.
At that point, my brother hired Mary to clean out the kitchen, and she removed items without my authorization and would not give them back when I asked for them.
She hired her daughter, the same one she fired two years ago, to do some of the work my brother had paid her to do in my dad's house following his death. She told her daughter she would pay her $25/hour (she had asked for $30), even though the rate that they received when they were working as caregivers was $35/hour.
My brother and I have asked for the notebooks that the caregivers wrote in for a year while they were working for her, and she refuses to give them to us.
My brother and I are co-executors of my dad's will and trustees of his estate, and I have informed the lawyers that I do not want this individual doing any additional work to deal with my dad's possessions, and I do not want her to enter the house again.
I was not going to leave a review of her or her business up until this point, but her refusal to give the notebooks has convinced me of her ill intent, and I now want to warn everybody who might hire her that she is a danger to seniors in her care. Do not hire this individual as a caregiver! She has been physically and emotionally abusive to a senior she was hired to care for and she is being hostile to me and my brother now. This is not someone you want to work for you or take care of your loved ones.