Patty Baglien came to the house on Fremont Lane in Yorba Linda last year with five suitcases and high hopes.
A live-in nanny, the 57-year-old grandmother had found a family to care for — three teenagers to send off to school, make their beds and cook their dinner. Mom was a respected local doctor, dad a respiratory therapist.
And for seven months all went well in that house on Fremont Lane.
Then dad hit Baglien with a gut punch. Literally.
He allegedly punched her in the stomach, knocking the wind right out of her and her idyllic life. Weeks later — in the middle of a global pandemic and state shutdown orders — Baglien was left jobless and homeless, thrown out of the $1.2 million house by two sheriff’s deputies despite eviction moratoriums by the governor’s office and Orange County Sheriff’s Department.
“I was scared they were going to arrest me and I didn’t want those bad marks on my record,” Baglien said.
From nanny to squatter
Baglien was no longer the beloved “nanny.” According to deputies, she was a “leech” who had to be shown the door. How did Baglien go from nanny to squatter?
Her story begins in April 2019 at the TLC Domestic Agency in Irvine.
Baglien was offered two leads by the agency; one was at the Yorba Linda home of Dr. Nicole Garcia and husband George. Baglien had a good feeling about that job offer: $800 a week plus room-and-board to care for two daughters and a son. The days were rather long, at 10 hours, but the work was easy and Baglien would be able to send some money to her convalescing daughter, a nurse who was shot and left partially paralyzed in an Oakland drive-by.
Baglien said the domestic agency told her it had checked out the Garcia family and the situation seemed like a perfect fit.
Until Oct. 6, 2019.
Dispute over daughters
On that day, Nicole Garcia was away on a trip and left Baglien in charge of the children, according to a sheriff’s report. Baglien had planned to take the two girls to her granddaughter’s birthday party in Fullerton.
But George Garcia, the report said, refused to let one of the girls go. When Baglien interceded, Garcia punched her in the stomach, sending her to the floor, the report alleged. He then grabbed her arm and began twisting it. Baglien broke away and called 911.
Garcia was arrested for assault, but was cited and released. No assault charges could be found against him in the court database.
Baglien said George Garcia left the family home because of a temporary restraining order obtained by his wife. Nicole Garcia then asked Baglien to sign a settlement saying she would not sue, Baglien said. She refused, saying the assault left her with six injured spinal disks.
Then in March, with a deadly virus sweeping the world, Nicole Garcia fired Baglien and told her to leave. Baglien again refused, invoking her rights as a tenant.
Garcia called the Sheriff’s Department, but a deputy explained there was nothing he could do. It was a civil problem.
But Nicole Garcia didn’t give up.
Were deputies friends of wife?
According to a complaint filed by Baglien with the Sheriff’s Department, Deputies Nicholas Doty and Steve Hortz arrived at the house on April 9 and ordered Baglien to leave. The deputies had no eviction papers, no court orders, just their badges. The complaint said it appeared that the deputies knew Nicole Garcia.
Doty is a resource officer at Yorba Linda High School. He won a sheriff’s lifesaving medal in 2016 for helping to resuscitate a 66-year-old man who suffered a heart attack while walking near his home. Horst was awarded the sheriff’s Medal of Courage in 2017 for saving a 21-year-old man from leaping to his death from a ledge at a shopping mall.
Baglien says Doty and Horst’s message was clear: leave or go to jail, at a time when Sheriff Don Barnes was releasing nonviolent jail inmates early to keep COVID-19 from spreading behind bars.
Baglien left and spent at least one night in her Nissan before she landed with a relative in Las Vegas.
‘I didn’t do anything’
“I was crying hysterically, my face was swollen shut,” she said in a phone interview. “They told me to leave when I didn’t do anything.”
She has filed a formal complaint with the department against the two deputies and plans to file a damage claim against the county.
“I wasn’t going to leave and (the deputies) were getting upset,” Baglien remembers. “They said, ‘You’re not leeching off this woman another day.’ ”
Sheriff’s Department investigating
Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Carrie Braun said Baglien’s complaint is being investigated.
“We have received the complaint and are looking into its merits. As such, we are not able to comment on the specifics at this time,” Braun said.
Nicole Garcia hung up the phone when contacted by a reporter. George Garcia could not be reached for comment.
