MENDOCINO CO., 8/10/26 — Deputies were sent to a house on the 1000 block of Redwood Drive in Redwood Valley late on Aug. 6 for a man threatening to harm himself. They left with an arrest in an elder financial abuse case.
James Hoffman Jr., 35, of Redwood Valley, was booked into the Mendocino County Jail at 12:53 a.m. Aug. 7 on three felony counts — theft from an elder or dependent adult, grand theft and embezzlement — according to the jail’s public booking record. He posted a $25,000 bail bond and was released at 3:06 p.m. that afternoon, after about 14 hours in custody.
The Sheriff’s Office announced the arrest Monday, four days after it happened, in a release that said deputies were dispatched at about 10:30 p.m. to assist medical personnel “with a report of a subject in possession of a knife.”
The booking record makes no mention of a knife.
Dispatch traffic archived by The Voice puts the call eight minutes earlier, at 10:22 p.m., and describes it differently. Redwood Valley Fire and an ambulance crew were sent for a man threatening suicide. Responders were told to stage away from the house and wait.
A deputy relayed a few minutes later that the man had locked himself in a bedroom and that there were “possibly knives” in the room — information passed on from Howard Forest Station, the Cal Fire command center south of Willits that dispatches fire and medical calls across unincorporated Mendocino County.
On the radio, deputies described a resident who had confronted Hoffman about credit card activity, and ran Hoffman’s name and birth date at 10:37 p.m. He came back valid and clear.
The victim is a 77-year-old man who lived with Hoffman and had given him limited access to his accounts to pay household bills, the Sheriff’s Office said in its release. The man said that he confronted Hoffman after finding unauthorized purchases on his credit card going back to 2024. A review of his financial records turned up numerous transactions outside what Hoffman was authorized to spend, according to the release, which was written by Sgt. J. Woida and approved by Capt. Quincy Cromer.
Medics never went in. They held their position for more than an hour until deputies released them at 11:33 p.m. Hoffman surrendered without further incident, the Sheriff’s Office said.
Neither the release nor the booking record says how much money the victim alleges he lost.
I may be wrong, but isn’t James Hoffman deaf and relys on an interpreter to communicate? How did the Sherriffs communicate with him?