Marin Home Care named Tiburon Peninsula’s business of the year
Updated: Jul 16
Editor’s note — This article won first place for best business story in the National Newspaper Association’s 2024 Better Newspapers Contest.
Laura Belluomini says the idea to start her own home health-care business grew out of a conversation her husband, Joe, had several years ago while riding the ferry home to Tiburon from San Francisco.
Joe was chatting with a friend who told him about the difficulties he was having finding care for his aging mother, who lived with him in Tiburon and required constant care. Joe immediately thought of his wife, a longtime nurse who was working at the University of California at San Francisco at the time but was growing tired of the commute and demanding schedule. After meeting the family, Belluomini was hired to care for the woman.
“I just knew when I met this woman, helping keep her in her home in Tiburon, that I just wanted to be able to help people do that, to age in place and not have to go into a nursing home, or if they are in a nursing home, to get even better care,” says Belluomini, who in 2016 founded Marin Home Care to provide both non-medical care and skilled nursing services to older adults.
The business, which operates out of the Maritime Center and now boasts more than 100 caregivers serving about 50 clients in Southern Marin, has been named the Tiburon Peninsula Chamber of Commerce’s 2023 Business of the Year.
The company will be honored by the local chamber this fall and will also be recognized at Bank of Marin’s annual Spirit of Marin luncheon on Sept. 29 at the Marin Civic Center fairgrounds.
Chamber Executive Director DeAnn Biss said Marin Home Care is a local business “that truly gives back to our community by supporting our senior citizens.”
“A core tenant of their business is the care of others, and this is critical to building a connected and thriving community,” she said.
Belluomini, who grew up in the Seattle suburb of Kirkland, says she knew she wanted to be a nurse from a young age.
“I always loved taking care of people, and I always loved the elderly and my grandparents and kind of spending that special time with those people,” she says.
She majored in kinesiology at the University of Montana, where she also spent two years on the basketball team before an ACL injury forced her to wind down her athletic career.
She moved to California to earn her master’s in nursing from UCSF. Before working at UCSF Medical Center, she served as the director of the Eye Surgery Center of San Francisco.
When she decided to start Marin Home Care, she knew she wanted it to be an independent company — not a franchise — to provide what she says is more personalized care. For the first several years, she ran the operation out of her Paradise Cay home, offering in-home care services ranging from bathing, dressing and meal preparation to light housekeeping and laundry, help running errands and companionship.
After a couple of years, Belluomini decided to expand by offering some medical services, adding skilled nurses to the team to give injections and infusions, provide wound care and refill pill boxes.
To obtain the needed medical license, she had to move the business to a commercial space in downtown Tiburon. She also hired Tiburon resident Caroline Glassell as director of care management; the two women first met years earlier when both had kids at the Belvedere Tiburon Childcare Center.
Marin Home Care now employs five office staff, including Belluomini and Glassell, more than 100 caregivers registered with the Marin Department of Social Services, a physical therapist and a couple of registered nurses. About half of its clients live on the Tiburon Peninsula, Glassell says. She notes both she and Belluomini agreed early on that they would focus on keeping their client list relatively small so they could provide high-quality, concierge-style services.
“When I joined Laura, I said to her, ‘One of the things I think we should do is try to differentiate ourselves, and the best way to do that is to not take on an enormous geographical area but stay in a certain territory and do it really well,’” Glassell says.
Focusing its services in Southern Marin also means the women can often see the impact of the business in the community.
“It’s really cool for us to see caregivers walking around town with clients,” Belluomini says. “It just always makes me happy to see them walking around Woodlands (Market) together or taking a stroll.”
Belluomini and Glassell say that community connection is important to them. Both have been active volunteers in the Reed Union School District. Belluomini has coached youth sports throughout Marin and supported Tiburon Girls Softball, while Glassell also volunteers with the SF-Marin Food Bank, among other community efforts.
The company has also sponsored caregiving and nursing visits for clients on fixed incomes.
“Of course this is a business, but we want to make sure we care for everybody as much as we can,” Glassell says.
The women said they were honored by the recognition from the Tiburon Peninsula Chamber of Commerce.
“We definitely work so hard to make a difference in this community,” Glassell says. “Sometimes this industry may not be one where you are truly recognized for what you do. It’s really hard work behind the scenes.”
They encouraged anyone interested in learning more about their company and its services to stop by the Maritime Center, 1640 Tiburon Blvd.
“We love being here in downtown Tiburon, and we love having residents pop in and ask us questions,” Belluomini says.
Glassell agrees.
“I always encourage, if you can, please stop by at any point and learn about who we are,” she says. “We can provide resources, guidance and help.”
Reach Assistant Editor Emily Lavin, The Ark’s education and youth reporter, at 415-944-3841.
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