Incoming president Donald Trump has vowed to deport all of the country’s undocumented residents.For students who are eyeing college, his presidency represents a potentially brutal Sophie’s Choice if they have undocumented parents: Risk exposing them to a possible immigration dragnet by completing the federal Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, or leave thousands of dollars in cash for school on the table.

While researchers and advocates have yet to hear anything concrete from Trump representatives about using financial aid data to target undocumented residents, they know families are afraid.

“Front line staff that work directly with students are reporting that students and parents are asking them if the FAFSA is safe” given Trump’s campaign promises of mass deportation, said Marcos Montes, policy director for Southern California College Attainment Network, a coalition of nonprofits that help students apply for college admission and financial aid.The National College Attainment Network said those fears are justified. It “cannot assure mixed-status students and families that data submitted to the US Department of Education, as part of the FAFSA process, will continue to be protected,” a message on its website read late last month.

That fear is exacerbated by Trump’s claims Sunday to NBC News that the only way to deport undocumented parents whose children are citizens is to have the whole family leave. “I don’t want to be breaking up families,” Trump said. “So the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back.” How Trump can force out citizens, including those with parents not born in the U.S., is unclear; experts say ending birthright citizenship would violate the U.S Constitution.An estimated 3.3 million Californians live in mixed-status households, including 1 in 5 children under 18, according to data from Equity Research Institute, a USC research group.

A California workaround

Experts say California students eligible for financial aid can minimize the possible harm to their undocumented parents. Unlike the FAFSA, the state aid application is not shared with federal agencies. That policy is among the various protections in place under California’s so-called “sanctuary” laws that limit the use of state resources to help federal immigration enforcement. Several legal experts told CalMatters the Trump administration would have to clear a high legal bar to gain access to those state records and that court cases have put restrictions on how wide a net immigration enforcement agencies can cast in their search for data.

Because the deadline for state financial aid is in March — though there are plans to move it to April — and the federal deadline is much later, Californians attending college here should complete the state application first, said Montes. Then they should wait to see if the Trump administration will break precedent and begin using the federal financial aid data for immigration enforcement purposes.

An estimated 3.3 million Californians live in mixed-status households, including 1 in 5 children under 18.
— Equity Research Institute

That strategy is also endorsed by Madeleine Villanueva, the interim higher education director at Immigrants Rising, a California-based advocacy and research group focused on undocumented residents. She stressed that there’s a bevy of analysts and immigrant rights advocates who’ll be watching for updates from the Trump administration.“Unfortunately, we can’t say what’s going to happen federally,” she said. But the California state aid application, known as the California Dream Act Application, is an “extra layer of safety when it comes to applying for financial aid.”The California Student Aid Commission, an agency with the sole goal of getting students more money, suggests students forgo federal aid given the risks to their families. The agency, which runs the state’s financial aid programs, wrote in a memo last month that completing just the state aid application is a “viable option” for students in mixed-status homes who have “fears of adverse action by federal immigration enforcement.”However, taking a wait-and-see approach with federal aid means California campuses won’t have a full picture of how much aid a student is likely to get when they send out financial aid estimates to admitted students in the spring. The University of California’s central office worries that students may not complete the FAFSA and lose out on aid. Both UC and the California State University indicated to CalMatters they’ll process either form students submit and will work with students who file their federal applications later.About 400,000 Californians receive the Cal Grant, which waives tuition at the public universities and partially at private colleges. That grant plus the state’s Middle Class Scholarship can add up to more than $17,000 in aid in one year. The state aid application ensures students fearful of the federal application can still receive the state support for which they’re eligible.The University of California’s undergraduate student government is also on edge about FAFSA. The lack of a firm firewall “could put certain students at risk,” said Saanvi Arora, external vice president for UC Berkeley’s student government and a board member for the systemwide student government.

Understanding the FAFSA risk

Students who are citizens and permanent residents are eligible for up to $7,400 in Pell grants and access to federal loans that come with repayment protections that are often stronger than what the private sector offers. To receive this aid, students who live with their parents need them to fill out portions of the federal aid application. More recently, parents without Social Security numbers have been asked to indicate they lack one and then must answer a set of questions about their identity.The U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Homeland Security, which also oversees the country’s immigration enforcement, have a regularly renewed agreement limiting the use of a student’s personal information. Because students need to be citizens or permanent residents to get financial aid, a signed agreement between the two departments states that students’ information they submit for FAFSA will be matched against an eligible immigration list called SAVE. It’s one that hundreds of state, local and federal agencies use to determine whether an individual is eligible for federal benefits. Neither SAVE nor the agency that operates it, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, are used for immigration enforcement purposes.

Conceptually, it’s not hard to use that federal financial aid data for enforcement purposes, according to experts who spoke with CalMatters. However, doing so would be a major break from current protocol. Under the Biden administration, the U.S. Department of Education “has not provided and will not provide information gathered through FAFSA to any federal immigration-related agency for law enforcement activities,” wrote in an email James Kvaal, who holds the number two spot at the U.S. Department of Education and is the top higher education officer in the federal government. However, he wrote, “students and their families should make the decisions that are right for them.”That does not “sound like a robust encouragement to go ahead and fill out the FAFSA,” said Bob Shireman, who was a senior higher education official in the education department during the Obama administration.The agreement between the departments “is not much of a firewall, it is more like a picket fence,” Shireman said in an interview. The agreement can be changed in a matter of months, he said, “so if the next administration wants to use education department records to identify people who may have an immigration status that could subject them to deportation, I don’t see anything preventing that from happening.”Federal laws limit the data sharing that can occur between the U.S. Department of Education and law enforcement agencies, said Shelveen Ratnam, a spokesperson for the California Student Aid Commission. Ratnam said that current law “strictly prohibits” agencies in possession of personally identifiable information, like parental data, from releasing that information, with few exceptions. Some other laws and policies also apply and the gist is that an agency can only use the personal information of others in ways that support the mission of that federal agency.But if the U.S. Department of Education gets subpoenaed for information, the department’s “responses and likelihood of challenging the demand for information are unknown,” according to Ratnam.

Even analysts who say using parental FAFSA information is an inefficient way to find possible undocumented parents urge caution. They say it’s not out of the question that a Trump administration could try to make use of that data for immigration enforcement purposes.While “it’s sort of methodologically flawed as a way to identify individuals,” said Corinne Kentor, an immigration and higher education researcher, “that doesn’t mean that it won’t be attempted. But I think it is probably harder and more work than other avenues.”

California Dream Act Application is safer

The California Dream Act Application has more protections than the federal application. Though originally designed to allow undocumented students who are California residents to apply for state college benefits, the application in 2024 was modified to permit any student who ran into problems with the federal application to at least apply for state grants. The change stemmed from colossal data issues with the federal application this year that prevented students with parents without Social Security numbers from completing the FAFSA.

According to a 1988 federal appeals court decision, “the government can’t enforce a subpoena that is just ‘fishing’ for data about undocumented people,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, a scholar on immigration law at UCLA. That’s in contrast to “trying to gather information on a particular individual that the government has reason to suspect is here in violation of the immigration laws.”

Arulanantham also said that a federal agency asking California’s financial aid agency to search databases for undocumented students could run afoul of the 10th Amendment.Finally, the state’s financial aid agency could challenge a judicial order or subpoena that seeks student records on the grounds that it’s not specific enough and violates the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable search and seizure, Ratnam said.

Now what does all this mean for students with undocumented parents who already submitted FAFSA information last year? Their information is already in government systems. Should they continue to file their FAFSA? Experts had few answers. They said that’s a decision that only families can decide together given the varying protections available.Arora, the UC student government member, is sympathetic to those households. It’s “absolutely a tough question,” she said. That’s one reason she wants UC officials to bolster existing immigration legal aid services, such as bringing in more lawyers.

It’s one answer she has to her own question: “How do we mitigate retribution that’s likely to happen against those students?”

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

She was born on March 20, 1936 in Englewood, Colorado. She died peacefully with family and friends at her bedside on July 17, 2024 at Frye’s Care Home in Eureka, aged 88. She resided in Fortuna for most of her adult life.

In her life Jeanette was a loved and loving wife, mother, grandmother, daughter and sister. She enjoyed her family very much. She worked 25 years as a receptionist at an orthodontist office in Fortuna. She devoted much of her spare time to the Fortuna Seventh Day Adventist Church and School, where she and her children attended.

She enjoyed nature, travel, taking walks, and learning new skills, and she loved socializing. She was well known for her ever present smile, enthusiasm and good humor. She always accepted a challenge.

She was preceded in death by her husband, Earl Cooper, her son, Dennis Cooper and three of her four sisters — Betty Ralph, Lorraine McDonald, and her twin sister Joanne Nix.

Jeanette is survived by sister Gail Pittman; two daughters, Nancy Cooper and Linda Endicott; and five grandchildren: Ray, Hannah and Laura Endicott, Kaitlin Bodiroga and Seth Cooper-Font.

A very special thank you to the dedicated caregivers of Frye’s Care Home that so lovingly cared for her during her last years with Alzheimer’s disease. Also, a heartfelt thank you to Hospice, which stands by to support family and patient in a most competent and compassionate way.

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The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Jeanette Cooper’s loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here. Email news@lostcoastoutpost.com.

On December 8, 2024, Nicholas E. Williams passed away at St. Joseph Hospital.

Nick was born Jan. 10, 1978 to Jeff Williams and his mother. Nick was the youngest of their three sons and is survived by his two older brothers, Tony and Andy Williams. He is preceded in death by his grandfather, Theon A. Williams; grandmother, who he called mom, Pearl Hughes; her husband, Bill Hughes; and his two uncles, Jack and John Williams.

Nick fathered four beautiful daughters with Jennifer Wilson, including Marasa. Nick was the husband of Christine Williams and stepped into the role of dad to Christopher, Sheree, Tanner and Adison. He took pride in being called grandpa by his grandson, Redsky, and two granddaughters — Kyleah “Babypa” and Kamie “Mojo.” He was a friend known to give the shirt of his back to help the next guy out. He was a man who held most at arm’s distance, but for those of us who had the opportunity to “really” know Nick he was an amazing man who loved deeply but had a hard time showing it.

Nick was a man that was not afraid of hard work. He gave and expected no less than 110%. Some considered him a “hard ass,” however if he was pushing you to do better it was because he cared and wanted you to realize your potential, and not settle for any less.

Nick enjoyed riding his Harley, hunting, traveling, and he lived for the thrill of riding dirt bikes. Fishing, however, is where he found his calm and quieting moments. It was not about the catch, seeing as how he would catch and release, and more about disconnecting from the chaos of life. It comforts me to believe that he is sitting with Granpa Bill and Uncle John with a fishing pole in his hand.

Nick leaves behind friends and loved ones whose lives that he has touched. Those who loved him will mourn their loss, cry their tears and cherish their memories. Nick may be gone but he will never be forgotten.

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The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Nick Williams’ loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here. Email news@lostcoastoutpost.com.

UPDATE, Dec. 13, 9:35 a.m.:

A Providence spokesperson sent the following statement on Friday morning:

We are truly saddened by the experience described in the complaint filed by “Jane Roe” and are currently reviewing the filing and allegations. Providence recently rolled out enhanced education and training for our medical staff and caregivers to reaffirm our provision of emergency services for all patients, including those who are pregnant. Safe, high compassionate care is always our top priority, and we want to reassure the Humboldt County community that they can count on us when they need us most as they have more than 100 years.

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A new lawsuit filed today in Humboldt County Superior Court alleges that Providence St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka denied necessary emergency abortion care to a woman in 2022 due to a religious prohibition on giving such care when there’s a detectable fetal heartbeat.

The allegations in the suit closely resemble those in the case filed roughly two and a half months ago by the Office of California Attorney General Rob Bonta. As in that case, the plaintiff went into labor prematurely and was allegedly denied an emergency abortion despite being told that her baby would not survive.

The Los Angeles-based law firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson filed the case pro bono on behalf of an anonymous client, who’s referred to in the complaint as “Jane Roe.” 

The suit seeks damages and relief on six grounds:

1. Denial of Emergency Medical Services and Care
2. Violation of the Unruh Civil Rights Act; 
3. Denial of Right of Privacy under California Constitution; 
4. Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress; 
5. Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress;
6. Violation of Unfair Competition Law.

Below we’ve reproduced the introduction to the suit. The full document can be downloaded via the link at the bottom of this post.

On December 12, 2022, Plaintiff—then 17 weeks into a very wanted pregnancy—felt her water break. Plaintiff immediately rushed to the emergency room at Providence St. Joseph Hospital (“Providence St. Joseph”) in Eureka, CA, hoping to save her baby. Once there, doctors confirmed she was in active labor and diagnosed her with previable preterm premature rupture of membranes (“previable PPROM”), a serious medical condition given Plaintiff’s other risk factors. They also gave her the tragic news that her baby would not survive. 

As devastating as this news would be for anyone, it was even more so for Plaintiff, who had been down this road before at Providence St. Joseph. Plaintiff had already lost two previous pregnancies to previable PPROM, both at around 17 weeks gestation.

Worse, Plaintiff feared that the staff at Providence St. Joseph — the only major hospital near her home and for hundreds of miles, and one that holds itself out as providing emergency medical care to the public — would again deny her the medical care she urgently needed. With no chance of survival for her baby, and with her risk of developing an infection or suffering another near-fatal hemorrhage increasing by the minute, Plaintiff needed an emergency abortion to protect her life and health. But Plaintiff’s doctors were forbidden from providing this necessary care so long as there was still a detectable fetal heartbeat — a prohibition imposed by hospital policy, not medical judgment.

This was a nightmare on replay. Plaintiff had sought treatment at Providence St. Joseph during both of her prior miscarriages and both times had been turned away and denied medically necessary care. On both prior occasions, Plaintiff had been forced to endure hours of labor and escalating risk of injury or death due to Providence St. Joseph’s policy. The first time, Plaintiff had to travel 5.5 hours by car to San Francisco, while in active labor, to receive care. The second time, Plaintiff was discharged after tests confirmed a fetal heartbeat and sent home while in active labor without an obstetrician ever evaluating her. Plaintiff delivered her baby the next morning in her obstetrician’s primary care office and nearly hemorrhaged to death.

This third time was no different. Plaintiff suffered in limbo — actively laboring and in pain, grieving her loss, and terrified that she might hemorrhage again or even die. After 19 hours of agony, Plaintiff spontaneously delivered her deceased baby in a hospital toilet.

Providence St. Joseph’s treatment of Plaintiff on these three occasions was shocking and inhumane. It was also illegal. Providence St. Joseph denied Plaintiff the emergency abortion care that her doctors deemed medically necessary and that she was entitled to under California law, instead leaving her to labor in excruciating pain, placing her at increased risk of a life-threatening infection or injury. That risk was real — Plaintiff did, on the second occasion, nearly hemorrhage to death and required a double blood transfusion. Plaintiff also suffered, and continues to suffer, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, and a fear of hospital settings from being denied care at the only major hospital — and now the only labor & delivery unit — in her county. Because Plaintiff desperately wants to have a baby, Providence St. Joseph is certainly the hospital where she will go for her next delivery.

Providence St. Joseph repeatedly denied Plaintiff emergency services and abortion care in violation of California’s Emergency Services Law (Health & Safety Code, § 1317, et seq.), the Unruh Civil Rights Act (Civ. Code, § 51, et seq.), her right of privacy under the California Constitution, and the Unfair Competition Law (Bus. & Prof. Code, § 17200, et seq.). By doing so, Providence St. Joseph also negligently and intentionally inflicted emotional distress upon Plaintiff.

Plaintiff therefore brings this action to obtain relief for the unimaginable physical and emotional harm she has repeatedly suffered as a result of Providence St. Joseph denying her right to medically necessary emergency abortion care and to enjoin the hospital from denying her such care in the future.

The Outpost emailed Providence of Northern California spokesperson Christian Hill shortly before publishing this post. We will provide an update if and when Providence responds.

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DOCUMENT: Jane Roe v. St. Joseph Health Northern California, LLC

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PREVIOUSLY

• CHP Watch: Closure of Highway 199

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State Route 199 remains fully closed along a five-mile stretch near Hiouchi, up in Del Norte County, following a rockslide onto the roadway late last night, according to the California Department of Transportation. 

The Caltrans District 1 Facebook page says the agency is turning travelers around on either side of post-miles 8.3 and 13 miles from Hwy. 101. 

“Responding crews, including maintenance and geotechnical personnel, recognize the importance of this route and the long detours around the slide, and are working hard to resume safe access as soon as possible,” the agency says. “We’ll keep you in the loop here when updates are available.”

Here are more photos of the slide and the cleanup effort:

Do you live in Arcata? Better yet, do you live in Arcata’s Valley West neighborhood? Do you enjoy community classes? Group exercise sessions? Gardening with your neighbors? How about increased access to social and health care services? 

If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, take a few minutes to complete this survey and let the City of Arcata know what types of programming and services you’d like to see at the new community center slated for Valley West. 

The survey is a part of the city’s ongoing effort to revamp Valley West, Arcata’s oft-overlooked neighborhood. In recent years, the city has allocated funds for numerous beautification and community improvement projects for Valley West, including REBOUND’s basketball court murals, new fruit trees at Valley West Park and infrastructure upgrades at Carlson Park. A new community center is next on the wish list.

Last year, the City of Arcata started leasing space for a community center at Valley West’s Woodsman Hall but Comunidad Unidad del Norte de Arcata/Community United of North Arcata (CUNA), a bilingual grassroots project aimed at improving Valley West, took over the lease for its resilience hub and family resource center.

Asked whether the City of Arcata is looking to lease an existing space or build a brand-new facility for the community center, Jennifer Dart, the city’s deputy director of community development, said staff is “open, at this point, to all options.”

“We’re in the early planning stages so we don’t have any mock-ups or locations planned out yet,” Dart told the Outpost. “Based on some previous engagement that was done by Cal Poly [Humboldt] students in 2021, there was a desire for space for recreational activities for youth and adults as well as classroom spaces for adult education. There was also a need expressed for a food pantry and mobile medical/dental care. The current survey will help provide additional clarity on what needs a Valley West Community Center could fulfill.”

The city is planning an in-person visioning session early next year to discuss the survey results with the Valley West community and go over next steps.

“We’re really looking forward to working with the Valley West community to develop a center that meets their needs,” Dart added.

Click here to take the survey. More information about Valley West improvement projects can be found at this link.

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UPDATE:

• Providence Issues Statement on the Future of St. Joe’s Heart Institute

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Early next year, Providence Health & Services will significantly reduce the availability of open heart surgery in Humboldt County by eliminating the only cardiothoracic surgeon position at St. Joseph Hospital, according to three employees who were present when the decision was announced internally last week.

In interviews with the Outpost, the employees say Providence made its decision for financial reasons, and they warn that the reduction in services will inevitably delay critical care to patients who suffer cardiac emergencies. Without a local open heart surgeon, county residents will also have to travel out of the area for non-emergency procedures such as valve replacements and coronary bypass surgeries.

A hospital spokesperson told the Outpost that Providence is not eliminating its heart program, though he declined to respond to allegations that the availability of cardiac surgery services will soon be reduced significantly.

In a staff meeting last Thursday morning with more than 100 employees present, management announced that Dr. Joseph Arcidi, the county’s only open heart surgeon, plans to resign by the beginning of February and administrators don’t intend to replace him.

Once he’s gone, they were told, Providence will have an out-of-county heart surgeon (probably from Santa Rosa) come to Eureka for six days per month to serve as the designated surgeon-on-standby during non-emergency heart procedures such as stent placements, angiograms and radial artery catheterizations. For the other 24 days per month, give or take, those procedures won’t be available locally, they said.

If anyone in Humboldt County suffers a serious cardiac emergency while the visiting surgeon happens to be in town, then local open heart surgery will likely be available. But if the emergency occurs outside of that six-day window, it won’t, the employees told the Outpost. 

“That could be detrimental to people who need cardiac surgery instantaneously,” said hospital employee Jessica Smith. [NOTE: That’s not her real name. She requested anonymity due to fear of professional repercussions.]

Asked if it’s fair to assume that local residents will die as a result of this decision, Smith didn’t hesitate. “Absolutely,” she said. “I 100% believe that.”

Austin Allison, a former Eureka City Councilmember and surgical technologist at St. Joseph Hospital, agreed to go on the record. He said that while heart attacks now are typically treated without having to open up the heart, there are other kinds of cardiac traumas that can occur without warning.

“There are accidents that happen all the time,” he said. “There’s shootings, stabbings … car accidents. Now, there will be no one [locally] available to help them” — except on those days when the out-of-town surgeon happens to be here.

Smith recalled one such incident when a patient was brought in to St. Joseph Hospital’s emergency room following heart trauma that required emergency open heart surgery. Time is of the utmost importance in such cases.

“The patient’s bleeding inside, and the pericardium is like a balloon — it can only hold so much,” Smith said. “The pressure builds up so much in the sac that [holds] the heart that the patient [eventually] dies because the heart can’t move.”

In this case, the patient was quickly moved into surgery and survived, Smith said. But if a similar incident happens after Dr. Arcidi leaves — and if it occurs outside of the six-day window when a visiting surgeon is here — then the patient will almost certainly need to be air-lifted to Santa Rosa or St. Helena, which takes at least two hours on a good day, according to Smith and Allison.

“And it’s weather-dependent,” Allison said. “You know how often our airport is grounded.”

Asked whether such a delay could prove fatal, Smith said, “It’s just a matter of time.”

Emergencies can also arise during more common heart procedures. St. Joseph Hospital’s Heart Institute is a designated STEMI receiving center, meaning it is equipped to handle ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction, the kind of serious heart attack often referred to as “the big one.”

Having a heart surgeon on standby is a precondition for being a designated STEMI receiving center, in part so that the surgeon — Dr. Arcidi, in the case of St. Joseph Hospital — is available should anything go wrong during procedures regularly performed in the cardiac catheterization lab (or “cath lab”).

“The cath lab is like the plumbing department,” Allison explained. Procedures commonly performed there include coronary angioplasties (in which a balloon is used to widen blocked or narrowed coronary arteries) and percutaneous coronary interventions, or PCI (in which a stent is inserted in a coronary artery to keep it open and prevent it from closing again).

Such procedures typically involve inserting a long, thin catheter tube, or “wire,” into a blood vessel in the patient’s wrist.

“But, say if the wire leaves that vessel and makes a hole, it’s possible to have a bad outcome and [the patient] may have to have open heart surgery,” Allison said.

“If you have a puncture, you have to have someone who can fix it,” confirmed another St. Joseph Hospital employee, who we’ll call Melissa Jones [also a pseudonym].

Such incidents are very rare, but Allison said it’s still important to have the heart team on standby. Jones explained that this team includes not just the surgeon but also an anesthesiologist, cardiovascular technologists and a perfusionist to operate the heart-lung machine.

“If your dad was getting an emergency surgery, you’d want him to have this [backup team] available and not have to go to Santa Rosa,” Allison said.

Smith recalls at least two patients who came in for pacemaker procedures, which are considered “elective” in that they’re meant to prevent cardiac emergencies rather than treat them. These patients fell victim to a rare accident in which the wire inserted into the heart perforated the left ventricle, “meaning the heart is actively pumping, and every time it pumps, blood is leaking out into the pericardium,” Smith said. “That [requires] surgery because blood is pooling around the heart.”

As with the heart trauma mentioned above, acting quickly in such cases is critically important.

“There’s no time to transfer them [to an out-of-county hospital] before they die,” Smith said.

Providence Denies Changes

The Outpost first received a tip last week saying that St. Joseph’s heart program would soon be eliminated altogether. We emailed Christian Hill, senior communications manager for Providence Northern California, and he responded, “I can confirm that we are NOT closing our heart program at St. Joseph Hospital.”

He also asked us to reveal our sources.

Last Thursday, having interviewed the above-quoted employees, we followed up with Hill to relay the specifics, including Dr. Arcidi’s pending resignation; the subsequent reduction in cardiac surgery services; the plan to bring a visiting surgeon to Humboldt County for six days per month; and the elimination of “elective” heart surgeries outside of those limited business hours.

Hill’s reply, sent five hours later, was brief: “Thanks for the follow up,” he wrote. “The email from Thursday is our response.”

Smith anticipated such a denial when we interviewed her earlier in the week.

“They’ll come back and say, ‘We’re not taking it away,’ you know. But they’re gonna offer it six days a month. That’s taking away,” she said.  “We [currently] have cardiac coverage 24/7. We have cardiac coverage for open heart surgery 24/7, 365. It’s always available. We always have a cardiac surgeon ready to go.”

After Dr. Arcidi leaves, that won’t be the case, she said.

When we spoke with Jones on Monday, she said, “The fact that they’re denying it seems crazy to me because they announced it in a meeting with more than 100 people.”

The Outpost called St. Joseph’s Heart Institute in hopes of speaking with Dr. Arcidi himself, but we were told that he is out of town through the end of the month.

Financial motives

Providence Health & Services, a Catholic health care system headquartered in Renton, Wash., is organized as a not-for-profit, but critics say it operates like a greedy corporation. It has reported hundreds of millions of dollars in operating losses each year since the COVID pandemic, but it also earns hundreds of millions through venture capital and financial market investments. The industry website Fierce Heathcare recently reported that Providence racked up $7.8 billion in unrestricted cash and investments through the first nine months of 2024.

Allison said Providence cares more about profits than patients, as demonstrated by its decision to slash open heart surgery services in Humboldt County.

“The [administration] is basically saying, ‘We don’t want to keep this program because it’s too expensive to run, just like what happened to rehab,” he said, referring to the recent closure of the acute inpatient rehabilitation unit on the General Hospital campus.

“It seems like with this hospital, if a program isn’t in the black they don’t want to subsidize it, even if it helps the community,” he continued. “You’re going to have to be flown out of the area to get the care you need. It’s just a scary thing for the community.”

He also lamented the impact this may have on the larger community.

“It hurts Humboldt County because when we lose health services, it makes future industry growth here poor,” he said. “People aren’t going to want to move to the area if our health care sucks. … The greed of the corporation is really affecting the rest of the county, because there really is nothing else available.”

He paused to acknowledge that some services provided by Providence are actually expanding. For example, he said, there’s now a pulmonologist on staff for the first time in years. 

“But we have to be aware of how Providence is a monopoly for services and how that affects this county,” Allison said. “It just seems so greedy, everything they’re doing. Losing the cardiac program is just one more thing.”

Both Smith and Allison said that starting next February, more local patients and their families will have to endure the inconvenience and expense of traveling out of town and staying for days during the difficult recovery period for open heart surgery.

“Open heart surgery recovery takes at least a week,” Smith said. 

Many patients who are forced to leave Humboldt County for surgery won’t have their families nearby for support — or their families will have to travel and stay in hotels, eat out and rack up expenses.

“[Currently] you have your family, your resources here to help take care of you,” Allison said. “Open heart surgery is a very big deal, and recovery can be difficult. …. To be out of Humboldt where your family is is, like, a really big undertaking.”

But all three employees agreed that the most serious repercussion of this decision will be the increased risk faced by people here in Humboldt County who suddenly experience a cardiac emergency and are forced to wait hours to receive the necessary care.

”To only have six days a month for the cardiac program? It’s ridiculous,” Smith said. “I just hate this for the community.”