Bay Area man needs daily assistance for his disability. His workers say he isn’t paying them

Dylan Correa, 22, was providing in-home care for a Napa man with a mobility-related disability when a woman came to the door one day in early December. She was angry at the client, Ronald Nasuti, who lost part of a foot to an illness and uses a wheelchair to move around.

“Just ignore her,” Nasuti advised Correa.

But the young man, who graduated from an emergency medical technician program at Napa Valley College and is trying to save money as he pursues firefighting jobs, would also wind up mad at Ron Nasuti. And other caregivers who’ve worked for him have their own grievances.

Nasuti, 70, has repeatedly hired, then shortchanged, the aides he solicits to do housecleaning, prepare meals and provide intimate bodily care, according to interviews with former caregivers and court records. The Press Democrat interviewed three of those caregivers, and two others have filed claims against him in Napa County Small Claims Court.

Those who agreed to talk say they know of other in-home providers who have gone unpaid by Nasuti, including their relatives. They are discussing unified action, and they were eager to speak to a reporter, hoping they can prevent other workers from being wronged.

“I want him to feel something,” said Alexya Delgado, who alleges Nasuti owes her $1,258 for work done in 2022. “I want him to read our names, these people who actually have a voice. I really hope he has a reality check.”

Nasuti offered brief comment before telling a reporter they’d be contacted by his attorney.

“There’s nobody I haven’t paid,” he said. “They’re mad because I’ve fired them. They were no-shows several times, and I didn’t like them, so I fired them. Some of them have printed things online, and as soon as someone contacts them about it, they don’t have anything to show.”

No legal counsel ever followed up.

Home care workers operate in the “direct care” industry, along with aides employed in assisted living facilities, nursing homes and hospitals. Home care is by far the largest of those segments in the U.S., numbering around 3 million workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Overall, the direct care sector is exploding as the American population continues to skew older.

Home care workers are particularly vulnerable.

Across the U.S., 87% are women, and 42% are foreign born. Wages tend to be low, considering the importance and intensity of the work, and may be dependent on unreliable streams of federal and state funding.

At least a quarter of these aides now stand to take a pay cut under a Trump administration proposal that would reopen a loophole allowing client-employers to classify care workers as “companions” who can be paid less than minimum wage. Abuse and exploitation are not uncommon.

Despite this fraught environment, Delgado said, she has never been ripped off during her 10 years working in home care. “Nothing but good people, lovely people,” Delgado said.

With one exception.

Delgado went to work for Nasuti in late September 2022. She was a single mom with an elementary school-aged child, and she agreed to be paid under the table, for “assisting Ron with PT and help around the house, showering and dressing and wound care. I also took him to appointments and any gatherings he wanted,” according to a claim Delgado filed in July 2024.

“Honestly, in the beginning he was very nice, a very good man,” Delgado, now 30 and living in Sacramento, told The Press Democrat.

Nasuti meticulously logged her hours and balance owed in a book of timesheets. That’s a practice others spoke of, too. So is this: Somewhere along the way, Nasuti stopped paying Delgado.

“Then it went to excuses,” she said. “It was, ‘Oh, this money isn’t coming, I can’t pay you for a few days.’

“I’m not stupid,” she said. “I know when I’m being lied to.”

She suggested a payment plan, but Nasuti balked, she said. Delgado didn’t see a penny from her last three weeks caring for him.

‘My daughter is out of food’

The woman who showed up angry at Nasuti’s house that day in December was Itzi Padilla, 23, who is studying at Napa Valley College to become a crime scene investigator. Padilla has an infant daughter. She needed a little extra money, so she responded to Nasuti’s post on the Nextdoor platform. He was looking for someone to do housecleaning, laundry and basic caregiving at his house on Legion Avenue, as well as cleaning and wiping him.

Padilla, like most of the other aides who say they worked for Nasuti, operated at least partially outside the state’s In-Home Supportive Services, or IHSS, program.

IHSS, administered by each county under the direction of the California Department of Social Services, offers financial support for people with limited income who are disabled, blind or over the age of 65 and need assistance to remain in their homes. It pays for things like meal preparation, laundry, bathing, feeding, grooming and assistance with medications.

Though IHSS-licensed staffing companies have at times been accused of mistreating or exploiting their workers, the licensing system does build in basic protections for both the caregiver and the client. Workers who choose to forego that licensing, even if they’re doing it for a limited time while pursuing other careers, can leave themselves exposed.

Padilla started working for Nasuti on Sept. 1. Like Delgado, she was fully compensated for a while. But by Oct. 9, Padilla was texting Nasuti to ask for overdue wages.

She shared dozens of text messages with The Press Democrat, covering almost two months. They show two people at cross purposes. Over and over again, the caregiver noted her increasingly dire predicament. Nasuti offered what read like sincere apologies — while stressing his own needs and asking her to work more shifts.

On Oct. 10, Padilla told him she’d have several bills come due in the next few days, including phone, electricity, credit card, rent and storage. Just over a week later, she wrote, “just want to know if you were able to get some money my daughter is out of wipes and food and I’m in (desperate) need to get her things.”

Padilla landed a job. But as she texted Nasuti on Nov. 20, “I’ve had to work in unclean clothes due to not having the funds to buy more, and my daughter also doesn’t have what she needs for school. Her school has even expressed concern about her well-being, which is directly caused by the lack of payment.”

Padilla had to borrow money to stave off eviction. She worried county Child Protective Services would be alerted to the family’s struggles.

Nasuti at various points texted that a bank turned him down for a loan, that another lender was having difficulty with the Chime payment system, that Chime had reversed a deposit because of a technical problem, that he was trying to borrow money from his roommate, that a medical billing company was delayed by the government shutdown, that he was waiting for a Social Security check.

Along the way, Nasuti also mentioned that his trash cans were overflowing, that he was out of clean clothes and that he needed someone to make him sandwiches.

Finally, on Dec. 5, Padilla texted Nasuti formal notice that she would be taking legal action, a plan she is still intent on pursuing.

Two other women, Carmen Roldan and her sister, also worked for Nasuti and are owed compensation, Roldan told The Press Democrat. They worked for him in 2023, she said. 

Correa, the EMT trainee, was working in construction last fall, but building slowed during the wet months. He had worked at a Napa senior residential facility for a while. So he, too, responded to a post by Nasuti on Nextdoor.

Correa began working for him Nov. 20. By Christmas, he alleged, he was owed at least $787.

Correa isn’t about to let it drop. “He picks on people he knows he can kind of get it away from,” he said of Nasuti.

After his pleas had been rebuffed for several weeks, Correa showed up at Nasuti’s front door on a rainy day in late December, to ask again for his money. He filmed the encounter and recently shared the footage with The Press Democrat.

After the two went back and forth for a while, Nasuti finally said, “Listen, I don’t want to argue with you. You’ll get your money when I’m ready to pay you the money.”

“You’d rather be sued than pay me on time,” Correa replied, sounding dumbfounded.

“Yes,” Nasuti said. “Because it will make you suffer.”

Small claims stacking up

Even when unpaid home care workers are willing to take action, they face hurdles. Because their wages are modest, and because most are unwilling to keep working after an employer misses several payments, they usually have to resort to small claims court, where it can be hard to find vindication.

Delgado, for example, originally filed her claim in Napa County in 2023. It was dismissed, she said, when Nasuti failed to appear for a hearing. She was invited to refile, which she eventually did, in 2024. This time, according to Delgado, her case was dismissed when the court informed her the defendant no longer lived in the county.

But that’s false, Delgado said. Nasuti has a long record of residence at his current home, a tidy, 1,380-square-foot house.

At least two other small claims have been waged against Nasuti in Napa. One was filed by Celia Segura Jimenez in October 2023. She claimed Nasuti owed her just over $3,000 for work performed in July and August of that year. Jimenez won her case, but returned to the courthouse a year later claiming Nasuti hadn’t settled up. The Napa County Sheriff’s Office issued an order compelling him to pay.

It isn’t clear whether Jimenez was ever compensated. The Press Democrat was unable to reach her.

Another woman, LaDonna Lane, joined Nasuti’s creditors in November, filing a small claim for just over $1,000. Lane worked for him at $30 an hour for most of September, she wrote, assisting with “bodily cleaning, getting him dressed, applying cream on his genitals, emptying urinals multiple times a day. Preparing meals — breakfast, lunch & sandwiches for later. Washing bedding daily, & clothes daily,” plus errands, shopping and transportation to Nasuti’s appointments.

Lane declined an interview request. She won her claim Thursday when Nasuti failed to attend their hearing via Zoom. He told The Press Democrat he didn’t know of the hearing, and had never been served notice.

Now Padilla and Correa, and perhaps others, are planning to file their own small claims. But does Nasuti have any money to claw back?

His former home care workers insist he does. Nasuti owns his house on Legion Avenue. He owned a second house on the same block, until he sold it for $470,000 in September 2023, public records show. That was a month before Jimenez’s small claim.

Nasuti assumed ownership of both properties through a probate court action, after his father died in 2016.

That relationship, it appears, was also complicated by financial disputes. Raymond Nasuti, then in his 80s, obtained a restraining order against his son in March 2003. It accused Ronald of opening credit card accounts and cellphone accounts using his father’s Social Security number, and of intimidating Raymond into loaning him more than $25,000 during the preceding year.

“Financial abuse by Defendant has been ongoing for years,” according to the restraining order.

Raymond Nasuti filed to remove the protective order three months later, writing that father and son had attended counseling together and resolved their differences.

You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On X (Twitter) @Skinny_Post.