The Carmel Country Spa is an unassuming California retreat tucked away in a wooded area off Carmel Valley Road. The spa is a tony health resort for guests who want to shed pounds, complete with a fashion boutique, full-service salon and massage studio.
With exercise and nutrition programs, rooms run $127 to $190 a night.
In December, Sharon Leigh Garner moved into one of the spa’s 25 rooms. Owner Carl Trigilio said he charged her a reduced rate because she was not taking part in the spa’s programs.
After two nights, he said, Garner told him she might be there a week. When that week was up, she said it would be another week. She did this every week, he said, paying as she went. Her reduced rent included breakfast every morning and maid service.
A few months after she had moved in, Trigilio said a friend warned him that his tenant had left a string of unhappy landlords in her wake.
“As long as she keeps paying for her room, I don’t have a problem with that,” was his reply, he said.
At the end of April, the rent stopped coming.
Garner told Trigilio he needed to give her a job so she could pay the rent.
He told her he wasn’t interested in hiring her.
“She said, `Well, it looks like I’m not going to leave. You’re going to have to evict me,’ ” Trigilio said.
She still lives there.
Garner has been described in court records as “the tenant from hell.”
And other area landlords say the description is apt.
Jim Needham, who evicted Garner from his Carmel Valley cottage last year for not paying rent, claimed in court that Garner stopped making rent payments after three months and began “terrorizing” him by accusing him of harassment and destroying his property.
“She told me that she was `the tenant from hell’ and said that she was going to take my house from me,” Needham said in court records.
Garner has been evicted at least nine times, according to court documents filed by Needham. She has a history of renting homes from wealthy landlords in San Mateo County, the documents said, stopping payments after a few months, then filing legal actions against the landlords to discourage or delay eviction proceedings.
Garner said she never has had the chance to tell her side of the story and is hesitant to do so until she gets a lawyer. She said the publicity over her eviction last year has caused her current problems.
“My life has been ruined in this whole area,” she said. “I can’t find a job and I can’t find a home. Yet, I was the victim, not the perpetrator.”
Garner claimed in court records that Needham gave her no privacy. She asked him to leave her alone, but said he performed household projects that kept him within a few feet of her cottage during “all hours of the day and night.”
She claims he “terrorized” her and she called the Monterey County Sheriff’s Department several times because he was bothering her.
When she was evicted from Needham’s cottage in January, she claims his attorney called her new landlord and said something that resulted in her losing that rental, according to court documents she filed.
For his part, Needham blames the district attorney’s office and sheriff’s department for not being more supportive of him and other landlords.
“I think the county ought to do something about this,” he said. “There will be other victims in this county unless she is stopped.”
But officials from the district attorney’s office and the sheriff’s department say evictions are civil matters.
“If all the landlords got together and said, `Every time she rented from us, she promised us the world and then skipped on it,’ and brought together enough evidence for us to make a report, then they may get that case in the DA’s office,” said Sgt. Bruce Palmer of the sheriff’s department. “Whether or not it is prosecuted is a DA decision.”
Roque Ugale, chief investigator for the district attorney’s office, said it is difficult to prove criminal intent.
“Could you say what was in their mind? They might have had the full intention of doing the right thing,” he said. “Are you a mind reader or did you call the psychic hot line?”
Trigilio doesn’t want things to get ugly with Garner. He said he lets her make local calls from the room’s phone. He doesn’t confront her. He said he has told her there is no reason for them to be “at each other’s throats.”
“I’m trying to be nice,” he said.
After Trigilio heard more stories about Garner’s evictions and disputes with landlords, he said, “I guess I’m next on the list.”
He said he is too busy running his business to put a lot of thought into the situation with Garner.
He is just waiting for the legal system to do its job.
“I just want to get along with everybody,” he said. “She can’t stay and not pay forever.”
