John Giomi, Carson City public guardian, said the COVID-related death toll among his clients dropped to zero once all clients were vaccinated. (Photo: Faith Evans/Nevada Appeal)
John Giomi, Carson City’s public guardian, has seen 13 of his clients suffer coronavirus-related deaths over the past two years, but there’s a silver lining.
“Once (our clients) got COVID vaccinations, we didn’t lose anybody,” Giomi said in an interview with the Appeal last month.
Only two of his clients have had COVID after being vaccinated, even though most of his clients live in communal situations with a high transmission risk.
He added, “People can have their own conclusions about whether vaccinations work or not, but it seems to me that the statistics in this office show that they’re incredibly successful.”
Out of all his clients, who usually number between 75 and 90 at a time, he had just one resistor – a retired racecar driver with a fear of needles.
The public guardian’s office in Carson City cares for adults who are not capable of managing their own finances, assets, medical needs, and other aspects of their lives. Adults who qualify for guardianship are often elderly and mentally or physically incapacitated with dementia, schizophrenia, major depressive disorder, Huntington’s disease, or other illness.
Usually, the role of guardian would fall to a family member, but for those without a willing or able family member, the public guardian steps in.
It’s a sensitive role, and one that does not come without some bad eggs. Giomi spent almost a decade in Douglas County investigating exploitation and advocating for the rights of people under guardianships.
From around 2009 to 2017, “What we found in Douglas County was that – and it was the same with all the counties – the courts weren’t following statutory rules and having the cases heard regularly, and having annual hearings, annual reports,” Giomi said.
He found cases where private guardians were listing their names on bank accounts, boats, motorhomes, cars, and other personal belongings. He recovered millions of dollars on behalf of people under guardianships.
It took a combination of education within the court system and 2017 legislation to get Nevada courts on the same page, following the letter of the law in every guardianship case.
Giomi took his current public guardian role with Carson City in 2019, and he said that he hasn’t seen as much evidence of exploitation here as he had in Douglas. He attributes it to a lack of wealth.
Most of his Carson City clients are destitute, and “more than 90 percent of our clients do not have someone in their lives who could act (as a guardian),” Giomi said. Almost all his clients are on Medicaid.
Carson City also has more people under guardianships than other rural counties.
“I’m not sure why that is, other than the families aren’t here to take care of the elderly people,” he said.
It’s certainly not an easy job serving as a guardian. Very few people under guardianships can live independently. Some of Giomi’s clients are in facilities in Las Vegas, Utah, and Massachusetts due to conditions that require extremely specialized care.
In a report that he submitted to the Board of Supervisors, he described guardianships as a labor of love.
This year, he’s hoping that he can bring back some normalcy and work with his clients in-person and one-on-one.
“We are proud of our accomplishments, saddened by the things we cannot change, and we have experienced too much death in the last two years,” he wrote. “But we come to work because we love what we do and try our best to make the lives of each one of our protected persons better.”
