S.F. sheriffs’ union spent $30K to push debunked story of hospital worker’s stabbing

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In the days after social worker Alberto Rangel was stabbed to death at a San Francisco General Hospital clinic in December, the deputy sheriffs’ union shelled out thousands to flood social media with posts that cast the deputy on site as a hero.

The union spent $29,549 to promote one of those posts across Meta platforms, financial records reviewed by Mission Local show. 

The lionizing of the deputy, however, turned out to be inaccurate, according to multiple eyewitnesses. They said that clinic staff intervened in the Dec. 4 stabbing at Ward 86 and the deputy onsite was slow to react. The paid post went up days after these accounts were reported. 

Last week Department of Public Health director Daniel Tsai also debunked the union’s claims, saying the “first responders to actually intervene and pull the assailant off Alberto was Ward 86 staff,” which was confirmed by “multiple primary sources and not just interviews, but bodycam footage and detailed call timestamps.”

But a Dec. 10 paid post funded by the Deputy Sheriffs’ Association and plastered across social media claimed a “deputy sheriff saved Ward 86 from a rapid mass casualty stabbing.”

The possibly AI-generated photo in the post showed a building labeled “86a,” which does not exist, and a sign that said “mask recumed,” a nonsensical, non-grammatical phrase that hospital staff said meant nothing to them.

After the union paid to boost the post, it had 1.4 million views as of March 2026. It is no longer being promoted. 

Tsai, however, last week told hospital staff that a “root cause analysis” confirmed it was staff at HIV/AIDS clinic Ward 86 who stopped the attack, not the deputy on scene. 

This contradicts the deputy sheriff’s union’s public messaging, viewed by more than a million people after it was funded by tens of thousands of advertising dollars.  

Witnesses also told Mission Local that it was the medical staff that intervened with Wilfredo Tortolero Arriechi as he stabbed Rangel in the neck and shoulders with a five-inch knife. 

The deputy “did not say a word or move toward the man that had the knife until at least 10 to 15 seconds after the man dropped the knife and put himself up against the wall,” eyewitness Charles Adams said in an interview.

Adams remembered yelling “Go!” at the deputy, but did not recall seeing the deputy move until the attack had stopped. “You would think he would run, right?” Adams remembered. “He didn’t.” 

More than a dozen other union Facebook posts between Dec. 6 and Dec. 24 blamed San Francisco General Hospital for Rangel’s death. The Deputy Sheriffs’ Association called out the Department of Public Health for being “anti-law enforcement,” criticized the hospital’s lack of weapons screening, and said deputy staffing cuts led to the security failure.

One post linked to a now-unavailable article on the union’s website about how the “deputy’s rapid response” at the hospital “likely prevented” more deaths. 

Records show the deputy sheriff’s union spent an additional $7,892 to promote a Dec. 24 post saying that the hospital “has documented safety failures.” As of March, that post has almost 800,000 views. It is no longer being promoted. 

Rangel’s colleagues at San Francisco General also criticized the hospital’s response. At the same time, they were outraged to see the sheriff’s union take credit for their response to their colleague’s attack even after reports said otherwise. 

But according to the sheriff’s union’s current leadership, most deputies didn’t know that this narrative was going to be advertised, let alone this extensively.

“The current Executive Board was not aware that spending at that level had occurred on this incident,” said Danilo Quintanilla, the union president as of Jan. 1. “Based on the information available to us, I believe most members were likely not aware either.”

Quintanilla said he found out about the expense last week, after he gained access to the union’s Facebook business profile. 

“My initial reaction was, ‘there has to be an error,’” he said. “There’s no way that that much money could have been spent on a post.” 

Quintanilla was unsure who had access to the Facebook account at the time of Rangel’s death. When Quintanilla was union secretary, from 2021 to 2024, he said, only the union’s president had access. In December, that was Ken Lomba. 

Lomba did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The union’s rules do not explicitly prevent the president from spending money on advertising without members’ consent, and Quintanilla said there had not been “any wrongdoing” on the part of his predecessor.

He said, however, he was concerned that recent reports of what happened the day Rangel was killed revealed that the union spent tens of thousands of dollars to promote a narrative that may be “inaccurate.”

Quintanilla said the union’s current leadership is focused on the “loss of life” and “tragic event that impacted the healthcare workers.” To ignore their firsthand experiences, he said, is “unfair and frankly insensitive to the Ward 86 staff.” 

“I do think the work that the sheriff’s deputies do day in and day out is really important to ensure that there’s public safety in our communities,” Quintanilla said. “But sometimes it’s important to measure our words and our thoughts before we commit to flashy storylines.”