NICOLE SATO: Our community of aging adults here in San Mateo County is growing rapidly.
TARA HEUMANN: And we have issues of elder abuse. We're trying to be as responsive as possible through our multidisciplinary team.
SHANNON MORGAN: EDAPT is focused on investigating and addressing financial abuse of elder and dependent adults.
NICOLE SATO: The Elder Dependent Adult Protective Team is comprised of Adult Protective Services, the District Attorney's office, County Counsel, the public guardian, and law enforcement.
SHANNON MORGAN: After the launching, we saw financial abuse cases increase by over 47 percent within a fiscal year.
NICOLE SATO: The complexity of the fraud that we're seeing is growing, in large part, because of identity theft.
TARA HEUMANN: We see a lot of real estate fraud. These offenders will just steal everything that seniors here in the Bay Area have spent their entire lives working for and saving for. And it's the role of our team to mobilize as quickly as we can to try and restore the home to the senior and recoup as many funds as we possibly can.
WOMAN: You want to touch base on the Smith restitution?
NICOLE SATO: Yes.
Our hope is to alleviate the pain and suffering that many of these older and dependent adults have been through.
TARA HEUMANN: A member of our team is a full-time training and outreach coordinator.
SHANNON MORGAN: Over the past 3 years, there's been almost 500 community outreach or in-service events, and I really believe that the reports that we are receiving, the uptick, is really correlated to the work that this person is doing.
TARA HEUMANN: The creation of the team has resulted in bringing much more community attention to the issue of elder and dependent adult abuse.
NICOLE SATO: He was going to the victim's home.
We have been able to secure more than 1.7 million in court-ordered restitution for victims. One of the best outcomes is really the teamwork invested by all of these different disciplines to really seek justice and helping them when they are in their greatest time of need.
TARA HEUMANN: It feels really good to be able to work with a community who are often overlooked but who deserve our respect and our time. Everyone on our team feels fortunate that this is what we get to do at work every day.
