A home caregiver in Conway, South Carolina is under police investigation after records show she was named power of attorney for an elderly patient with Parkinson’s disease, then had his house deeded to her for $5 just weeks before he died — and didn’t tell his daughter he had died until she drove down from Maryland to check on him herself. No criminal charges have been filed against the caregiver, Sarah Smalls, and Conway police have confirmed only that the matter is under investigation for possible exploitation of a vulnerable adult.
Smalls began caring for 75-year-old Robert Rowland, who had Parkinson’s disease and a brain injury, in March 2024 through a referral from Griswold Home Care’s Myrtle Beach registry, a non-medical companion and personal-care agency. South Carolina’s Medicaid provider registry lists Smalls, under her current name, as a certified nurse aide. Records the daughter later obtained by subpoena, first reported by WMBF News, show Smalls previously held an active nurse practitioner license under a maiden name — a detail that has not been publicly explained and that WMBF has not connected to any disciplinary history.
What the daughter found
Records show Smalls was named Rowland’s power of attorney in April 2026. On April 17, 2026, a quitclaim deed transferred Rowland’s Conway home to Smalls for a stated payment of $5. Rowland’s daughter, Nora Rowland, lives in Baltimore and said she grew increasingly unable to reach her father after Smalls took over his care. When she didn’t hear from him on Father’s Day, she drove to Conway to check on him. She says she found the front door lock had been changed and a Ring doorbell camera newly installed; when she reached Smalls, she was told her father had already died. Bank statements Rowland later obtained show more than $41,000 moving from her father’s account to Smalls, including transfers made after his death in June 2026. Rowland was briefly handcuffed by police during the confrontation over the property; those trespassing charges against her have since been dismissed, and she is now separately contesting the deed transfer in civil court.
Where the case stands
Griswold Care Pairing for Myrtle Beach, the franchise location that referred Smalls, told reporters that Smalls was an independent caregiver on its registry who passed a required background check and worked with Rowland for “a very brief period” in 2024. The company said that by the time of the power-of-attorney designation and property transfer, Rowland was no longer receiving services through Griswold, and that it “does not condone abuse, exploitation, or inappropriate financial relationships between caregivers and the individuals in their care.” Conway police have not announced an arrest or filed charges as of this writing.
Every home health and hospice nurse I know has, at some point, been the only person checking in on a patient whose family lives states away — and most of us never once think about becoming that patient’s power of attorney, because the line between caregiving and control is exactly this bright. A vulnerable adult with a brain injury signing away his house for five dollars to the person managing his daily care isn’t a gray area; it’s the textbook fact pattern every elder-exploitation training module warns about, and it doesn’t matter whether the person holding that POA currently carries an RN behind her name or once did. If nothing else, this is a reminder to document who else is checking in on your patient, and to say something the moment a family member goes quiet.