04/29/2026
Joe was a character. He loved radios, batteries, Band-Aids, Mickey Mouse, Santa Claus, newspapers, TV Guides, snacks, and car rides. His favorite colors were red and yellow—which he pronounced “yella.”
When he was younger, Joe was loud, goofy, funny, and sometimes bossy. He adored the sun, the moon, the stars, and angels. Sadly, he often said:
“I ain’t got no people. I just got the sun. It follows me wherever I go.”
Joe was born on April 28, 1941, with developmental disabilities. His birth certificate tells a difficult beginning—he was born three months premature and without prenatal care, and his mother spent less than an hour in a San Francisco hospital before delivery.
By the age of six, Joe had been placed at Sonoma State Hospital. He also spent time at Agnews State Hospital and Napa State Hospital. Records show he was never visited by his family.
That absence left a lasting mark on him.
Institutions like these were often overcrowded and isolating places where people with disabilities were separated from society and stripped of their identities. Residents were labeled as patients instead of recognized as people. Children and adults were often housed together. Privacy was rare. Meaningful activity was limited. Many residents spent their entire lives there.
Over time, disturbing reports emerged about neglect, abuse, forced sterilization, and unethical medical experimentation. These realities helped spark a nationwide movement to close large institutions and support people with disabilities in community life instead.
Joe remembered the day he was finally moved to San Francisco. But even after leaving the institution, life was not easy. He lived in several group homes where he continued to experience neglect and abuse.
But this sad story has a happy ending.
He began attending programs that supported people with disabilities in San Francisco. He found community. He gained job experience, including working in Lisa Markey’s dorm cafeteria while she served as his job coach. He loved the Recreation Center for the Handicapped, where he enjoyed activities, camp, swimming, horseback riding, and sleeping under the stars with his cot pulled up next to hers.
That is where their friendship began in the 1980s, when Lisa Markey ( PDS founder and Executive Director) was a student at San Francisco State University.
From the very beginning, Joe called Lisa his sister.
When he came to her parents’ house for Christmas dinner, he began calling her mom “Mother” and her father “Daddy.”
For Joe, words like mother, father, sister, brother, and friend were never casual. They were precious. They carried the weight of everything he had been denied and everything he still longed for. He had gone through life watching other people belong to one another. Watching other people be claimed.
If he met anyone named Joe—even if it was only their middle name—they became his brother. Priests were Father. Nuns were Sister. These titles were expressions of Joe’s longing for affection, belonging, and recognition.
Looking back, Lisa realizes how open-minded her parents were to welcome him into their family. She was only twenty, and Joe was in his forties. When he visited, he stayed in the extra twin bed in her room, and she helped him with things like bathing and shaving. It was very important to her that Joe wake up with them on Christmas morning and open presents like everyone else.
Growing up, Lisa had a great-aunt Lena with Down syndrome whom she absolutely adored. She always wished Lena could spend holidays with them, but her grandfather believed she was better off staying at Sonoma State Hospital. Lena died shortly before Lisa met Joe.
Being able to share those simple family moments with Joe felt like a wish finally fulfilled.
Joe spent time in Lisa’s dorm room and later in her apartments. He went on trips with her friends and her first husband—to the snow, camping, baseball games, and Disneyland. At one point, Lisa was even fired from Recreation for the Handicapped because they believed she had become too close to him and that someday she would disappoint him when the friendship ended.
But the opposite happened.
Their friendship lasted more than forty years.
In the 1990s, Joe moved to Marin County to be closer to Lisa and began receiving support from PDS and Casa Allegra Community Services. His life truly began to flourish.
He lived in his own apartment with round-the-clock support. He worked for more than twenty years at Fresh Choice and Pasta Pomodoro before retiring. He made many friends and became a known and accepted member of his community.
In retirement, he enjoyed a life of comfort and care with the support of Casa Allegra. In the end, Joe lived like a king, with an entire team of people attending to his every need twenty-four hours a day.
For more than twenty years, Joe spent holidays with Lisa’s family. Later, when she became pregnant with her son Andre and was caring for her father and grandfather, Larry and Rachel Jean graciously took over hosting many of those gatherings. Joe became part of their extended family as well, celebrating holidays with Larry, Rachel, Joey, Gabriel, Josh, Christine, and Isaac. He was especially close to Rachel’s mother, Vicky Greenhill, whom he lovingly called “Mother.”
Joe passed peacefully on the morning of March 29, 2026, at 84 years old, with Larry and Rachel by his bedside.
He spent much of his life reaching toward connection. He always asked people, “Hi, my friend. Are you my friend?”
Because friendship, like family, was never a small thing to him. It was one of the great hopes of his life.
In the end, he had people.
He was surrounded by friendship, by devotion, by those who knew him well, and by those who welcomed him into their homes and hearts. The family he longed for was not the one he was born into, but it was real all the same.
The bright sunny logo of People with Disabilities Succeeding was inspired by Joe and represents warmth, friendship, and belonging. It reflects our hope that PDS helps others find the same sense of connection, community, and “people” that Joe spent his life searching for—and ultimately found.
The bright sunny logo of People with Disabilities Succeeding was inspired by Joe and represents warmth, friendship, and belonging. It reflects our hope that PDS helps others find the same sense of connection, community, and “people” that Joe spent his life searching for—and ultimately found.
