Woman found in stairwell was forgetful
Before she went missing from a senior center on the San Francisco General Hospital campus — only to be found dead in the stairwell of a nearby building 10 days later — Ruby Andersen was known as a sweet and generous neighbor, a fellow resident said.
Wes Snidenbach, 59, told The Chronicle that he met the 75-year-old Andersen two years ago, when he moved into the Behavioral Health Center on the hospital’s 23-acre campus. In that time, Snidenbach said, he never saw Andersen in a bad mood or bothering anybody. She was engaging, he noted, and freely handed out cigarettes to other residents.
But she was sometimes forgetful, Snidenbach said, and he began to worry when he didn’t see Andersen around for a while.
“I asked what was going on, ‘Where’s Ruby?’ Snidenbach said Friday outside of the residence. “They said the family doesn’t know where she is, the facility doesn’t know where she is.”
The mystery came to a tragic conclusion Wednesday, when Andersen’s body was discovered in the stairwell of a power plant on
the hospital’s campus. Staff for the residential care facility, which is operated by the city’s Department of Public Health, had reported her missing 10 days earlier.
The San Francisco Medical Examiner’s office said Friday it found no initial evidence to suggest foul play in Andersen’s death. An autopsy report detailing the cause and manner of death is pending.
On the morning of May 19, Andersen signed herself out of the residential care center and told staff she would return by 4 p.m., San Francisco Sheriff Vicki Hennessy said. Andersen was reported missing the following day.
While facility staff members help residents with dayto-day activities, health officials said they also promote independent living and residents are able to come and go as they please. The center is designed for those with diagnosed mental health issues.
Health officials said privacy laws prevented them from confirming Andersen’s residency status or disclosing any medical information, but Andersen’s daughter told media outlets that her mother suffered from dementia — a detail Snidenbach said he’d also heard “through the grapevine.”
Snidenbach said the center requires its residents to sign in and out when they leave the facility but noted that it doesn’t always happen.
“You’re supposed to sign out, let them know where you’re going,” he said. “So if something happens, they can pinpoint where you’re at.”
A spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s Department said Friday that she didn’t have any information on whether Andersen told staff where she was going when she signed out.
Roland Pickens, director of the San Francisco Health Network, the city-run health care system that operates the hospital and care center where Andersen lived, said gaps in security protocol allowed people to access the power plant between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. It is unclear how long Andersen had been in the building before her body was found.
Hospital officials said they’ve since corrected the issue by allowing only those with special security badges to gain entry, and officials are continuing to investigate the campus for any public safety “vulnerabilities.”
While Andersen was a resident on the hospital’s campus, she wasn’t considered a patient. A report of a missing patient, hospital officials said, sets in motion a more urgent protocol known as a “code green” — a top-tobottom manhunt of all the campus properties.
Andersen’s daughter, Charlene Roberts, told reporters Wednesday she is outraged by the incident, but she has since declined The Chronicle’s interview requests.
Snidenbach said Andersen’s death hasn’t made him question the safety of the senior center.
“That’s a very safe place to live, security, everything,” he said. “This is something that shouldn’t have happened, (and) it happened because she wandered into that building.”