Alameda Family Funeral & Cremation

The body inside their furnace — that of 91-year-old Vincent Jarvis — was supposed to be sent to the county coroner for an autopsy before the cremation, but that didn’t happen. Upset and unsure how to proceed, the employees called their boss, who told them to open the furnace and pour water on the body that was burning at around 900 degrees Fahrenheit. That further damaged the remains.The family of Vincent Jarvis has sued a Pacheco funeral home over a<br />premature cremation. (Courtesy of Gilbert Purcell) In the end, a skinless, headless and charred torso was sent to the coroner.The May 2013 incident at the Pacheco funeral home left Jarvis’ family badly shaken to this day, his daughter Elizabeth Dennison said.The family, who had requested the autopsy, filed a lawsuit against Alta Vista. On Oct. 5, after a three-week trial, a jury returned its verdict: The funeral home had been negligent in starting the cremation, but the family was not entitled to any damages.The reason? Jurors found that the mistake had not caused Jarvis’ family “serious” emotional distress.Dennison disagrees.“We can’t even look at a picture of our dad without seeing something atrocious and gruesome,” she said. “We don’t understand what happened. This is something that is affecting us daily; we can’t think of our own father.”Gil Purcell, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said they plan to file an appeal, and blasted several of the trial judge’s rulings as “ridiculous” and nonsensical.“We’re going to keep fighting the good fight,” Purcell said.Attorney John A. Mason, who represented the funeral home, said in an email his clients were pleased with the verdict and referred to the mistake as an “unfortunate paperwork error.”“Our client did everything humanly possible to rectify the situation and ensure that the decedent’s lungs could, in fact, be removed by ...

On the wall of the main chapel at Alameda Family Funeral and Cremation, visitors can find the “Tree of Life,” a new mural by artist John Pugh that speaks to the connectedness of human life and nature.Pugh, who used to be a Bay Area resident and now lives in Truckee, said this piece–which he worked on over the span of five months and completed in 2012–was one of his most unique.“It was a good opportunity to work on something that was a little more on the spiritual side of things,” Pugh said. “It was a different road to go down.”Depicted in the “Tree of Life” is a large oak tree with an array of leaves that symbolize the different seasons. The tree is surrounded by a pond with a swan swimming downstream and into a tunnel that could reflect the unknown or the afterlife, but not as a place that’s foreboding. “Maybe a place that around the corner is going to be something beautiful,” Pugh said.The message behind the mural is designed for a room where memorial services are held and eulogies are read. When producing the piece, Pugh said he had intended to create something with a contemplative quality to it that would allow people to reflect, meditate and be inspired.“It’s kind of meant to be nothing religious, but a spiritual full cycle of life type of tone to it, and to kind of embrace the cycle, the naturalness of what’s going on with life and with nature,” Pugh said.He said he was initially approached about the project by Zoe Alameda about 10 years ago, but started working on it about four years ago. One challenge of creating such a piece, Pugh noted, was balancing the spiritual concept with the trompe l’oeil effect which he specializes in. The term, which is French for “deceive the eye,” is an art technique that gives the illusion of a three-dimensional scene behind the wall.Pugh has completed well over 200 murals throughout his career. He said he takes on an ave...