Two from Old Oak Ranch test positive, one hospitalized

Two of the recent COVID-19 cases in Tuolumne County include the former executive director of Old Oak Ranch in Columbia and a man who was previously living there as part of a government program to provide temporary housing for homeless people during the pandemic.

Chris Khan, 48, the ranch's former executive director, was admitted to Adventist Health Sonora on Monday and remained hospitalized as of Tuesday morning due to worsening symptoms, according to his wife, Christine, who said he started feeling symptoms July 4, was tested July 6 and got the results back on Sunday.

“He's gotten progressively worse,” Christine Khan said. “He thought that he needed to get checked out.”

Christine Khan said her husband was expected to be discharged by the hospital at some point Tuesday.

The Khans and all of the other employees at the ranch were laid off on June 30 when it was shut down by the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, a Pentecostal Christian denomination based in Los Angeles that has owned and operated the ranch since 1947.

Anthony Eakin, 58, tested positive for the virus on Saturday and was among 25 homeless people who had been staying at the ranch through the Project Roomkey program until they were asked to leave by the church.

He has been quarantined in a room paid for by the county since Saturday and was feeling some discomfort in his lungs on Tuesday, but decided against going to the hospital.

Eakin said he got tested when seeking pain medication at the hospital for soreness in his feet after walking more than three hours from the ranch to Sonora after it closed. He said most of his belongings were still at the ranch.

The Tuolumne County Public Health Department announced Tuesday afternoon three new

cases were identified and two were hospitalized, bringing the county's total to 76 and active cases to 26.

There were also 24 people in isolation after testing positive, but the county has not recorded a death from the virus.

Christine Khan said she and her 16-year-old daughter both got tested on Monday and are now under quarantine at the ranch until July 27 along with about a dozen other former employees who live on campus.

Two people who live at a homeless encampment off Stockton Road in Sonora known as “Camp Hope” have also been placed under quarantine by the county Public Health Department because they came into contact with Eakin before he tested positive.

Rhonda Boyd, 53, said on Monday that she and her husband will be confined to their tent at Camp Hope until July 21 per the orders from the Public Health Department. She didn't know of any others at the camp who were ordered to quarantine.

Boyd said that she and her husband weren't feeling any symptoms as of Tuesday, but the county called her to put them up in a room for a week and get her tested.

“I'm scared,” she said. “I don't want to go out like that. I've got grandkids.”

The cases appeared two weeks after the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel sent officials to temporarily shutter the ranch after its Project Roomkey contract with the county ended on June 30

Project Roomkey is a federally funded program administered through the California Department of Social Services to house people in hotels and motels who have been exposed to the virus or are at high risk and have no place to safely quarantine.

The Khans have said they were blindsided by the church's decision because they had made agreements with each of the tenants to stay an additional month, with some paying out of pocket and others receiving subsidies through various government aid programs.

Chris Khan said in a previous interview that he was also applying for grants that he hoped would sustain the ranch into the future.

Bill Chaney, a district supervisor for the church, said in a previous interview with The Union Democrat that the church wasn't aware of the contracts with the tenants and had not approved them before making the decision to shut it down.

Chaney said they closed the ranch because it was losing money and weren't sure if they would be able to reopen it until possibly 2022 because of restrictions imposed by California to slow the spread of the virus.

Kellae Brown, the county's grant-funded homeless outreach coordinator, said the county wasn't aware of the church's decision to shut down before it happened and had run out of funding for continuing to house people at the ranch.

“They were no longer part of Project Roomkey,” she said. “They were all paying their own rent, or some had applied for subsidies, but they were doing their own thing.”

Chaney said the church reimbursed each of the tenants when they were told they had to leave. Eakin said some received payments of as much as $2,500, though he received $1,500.

Brown said the county sent a crew to the ranch after finding out that it was being shut down, but some of the people who were staying there had already left. There was enough remaining funds to house those they could track down for two weeks.

“That's all the money we have left, there's no more,” she said. “We worked for weeks to get different grants and types of support, but no one's renting and there's just no more funding.

The county is keeping in contact with people who were previously living at the camps and will instruct them to get tested if they feel symptoms as they would anyone else, Brown said, adding that there haven't been any positive cases in the county's homeless camps at this point.

Brown also emphasized that the county still has funding to provide a room for anyone who tests positive for the virus and doesn't have a place to safely isolate, even if they aren't homeless.

“No one is going to be on the streets,” she said. “That could be a doctor, a nurse, a janitor, a homeless person, anybody. If you live in an apartment with your 90 year-old-mother, we're obviously not going to send you back there.”

Anita Nadolsky, 59, is one of the people who are homeless and being housed with the county funds. She also got the church to pay for a week's worth of rent, but has to leave where she's currently staying by

July 21 or continue paying herself.

Nadolsky said she was tested on Monday along with another woman who was staying at the ranch. She's at high risk as a breast cancer survivor who's had three strokes and suffers from dystonia, a neurological disorder characterized by involuntary muscle contractions that cause slow, repetitive and abnormal twisting movements.

“If I get this, I'll die,” she said.

When the ranch got shut down, Nadolsky says she was forced to sit outside on the side of the road while waiting for a ride and suffering from dystonic tremors as a result of the stress.

Nadolsky said she has been homeless and lived mostly in her van for more than two years. She has struggled to find a home she can afford because she doesn't qualify for Medical and has to pay a large portion of her ongoing medical expenses.

“People need to realize that not all homeless people are addicts. I have never done drugs or alcohol in my life,” she said, adding that her only son was a U.S. Army Ranger and got killed by a drunk driver in 2010. “I didn't choose to be homeless. It just happened.”

The ranch finally felt like a place that Nadolsky could call home. She was looking for a permanent place to stay and found a mobile home that she could afford, but she needs to come up with $3,000 by Thursday for the down payment.

Nadolsky and the Khans both say that one of the church officials who came from out of town to shut down the ranch appeared to be sick.

“My concern is that we've all been exposed to the COVID,” Nadolsky said.

Josh Best, a representative of the church's national office, said the church has reached out to the ranch's ex-employees and recommended that they get tested.

Best said he could not confirm whether specific church officials who were at the ranch on June 30 had tested positive due to privacy concerns.

“We wanted them (the ranch's ex-employees) to be aware that they may have come in contact with one or more people who may have tested positive,” he said.

Brown said the county doesn't know how the cases connected to Old Oak Ranch became infected because people typically don't feel symptoms for 14 days after being exposed.