The family lived on a tree-lined street in a tidy suburban neighborhood on San Francisco’s West Side.
They were a mom, a dad, and two school-age kids. They were small-business owners and entrepreneurs, who lived in a spacious home purchased for $1.3 million more than a decade ago. Their neighbors all described them as friendly, if somewhat private, the pleasant sounds of their garden dinners sometimes spilling over the fence next door.
Nobody who lived in this affluent, low-crime neighborhood would expect that the family’s home, at 930 Monterey Blvd., would be the scene of a grisly discovery Wednesday, when four people believed to be the family were found dead. Police are investigating the incident as a murder-suicide.
Citing an ongoing “death investigation,” the office of the medical examiner has not released the names of the deceased. But public records show the home is owned by Paula Truong and Thomas Russell (T.R.) Ocheltree, a married couple with two children. Police sources have confirmed that the four dead are believed to be members of the same family.
Despite the outward appearance of prosperity, Truong and Ocheltree have faced an escalating series of financial challenges over the last several years, The Standard has found. Public records and accounts from associates have unveiled a string of failed businesses, the foreclosure of the family home, and a growing tally of unpaid debts that appeared to be spiraling out of control.
Paul Bleeg, a retired tax partner at accounting firm EisnerAmper, said Truong was a client for around 15 years and described her as a “very driven and accomplished entrepreneur.”
He said Truong bought an auto dismantling business before pivoting into repairs of European cars and re-branding as Zentrum Motors. She and Ocheltree later operated cafes and a liquor store, although Bleeg considered Truong to be the “driving force of the business.”
Bleeg prepared the couple’s tax returns until about five years ago, when they stopped paying their invoices and “went radio silent.”
“She was already several years late in paying us. I got word from my superiors that I can’t do any more work for her,” he said.
According to property records, the couple purchased the house at 930 Monterey Blvd. in 2014, with Truong as the primary owner. Over the next two years, she used the house as collateral to take out loans from private individuals totaling nearly $500,000, the records show.
In 2017, Truong transferred ownership of the house to a business entity she operated using the address of Zentrum Motors. That entity paid off the debts before taking an additional $1.8 million in financing from Cathay Bank, according to property records.
By 2019, Truong took out two more loans totaling more than $2.7 million, according to property records. One originated from National Fleet Wholesale, a used-car wholesale dealership in Southern California. A year later, the company loaned Truong an additional $260,000.
Almir Zalihic sold his deli at 499 Monterey Blvd. to Truong and Ocheltree in 2020. The couple reworked it into a high-end liquor and wine retailer called Starr Spirits, which shuttered in 2023.
“They just raised the prices and scared away all the locals,” Zalihic said. “They made it look very nice inside, but it just didn’t work for the residential neighborhood.”
Meanwhile, the couple opened four locations of Orbit Coffee, three in Oakland and one in San Jose, that specialized in cafe sua da, a Vietnamese iced coffee that paid homage to Truong’s heritage. All four locations also closed in 2023.
While their businesses were closing, a foreclosure company working on behalf of National Fleet started the process of seizing the home for unpaid debts. The couple tried to delay the public auction of their home that year, but the property eventually sold for $2 million.
In March, Truong and Ocheltree were booted as owners and replaced by entities tied to their mortgage company, which was owed nearly $2.5 million. The family remained in the house, and the sheriff’s office said they had received no formal eviction notice.
Additionally, Truong was sued Jan. 21 in San Francisco Superior Court by her credit card company for unpaid debt.
Superior Court records show that Discover Bank sought to recover $17,716 from Truong after a missed payment at the end of last July. In a judge’s default ruling on April 18, 2025, Truong was ordered to pay in full, adding $441 in costs, for a total of $18,157.26.
Neighbors, friends, and family
According to a 911 dispatch call, police were called to the home Wednesday at around 1:20 p.m. by Ocheltree’s brother.
Robert Ocheltree of Danville declined to comment when reached by phone Thursday. Additional efforts to reach the families of both Ocheltree and Truong were unsuccessful.
Neighbors described a typical, if somewhat subdued, suburban family.
Preston Becker, who lives one block down Monterey Blvd., recalled that his wife and kids had run into them at “ski school once upon a time.” He’d long recognized the family as having kids around the same age as his own, but said they ran in different circles.
Next-door neighbor Belinda Hanart admitted to knowing very little about the family, despite having three kids close in age to their own. “We could hear the kids in the garden,” she said. “We could hear when they have maybe dinner outside in the garden.”
But in recent months, Hanart saw less of the family, she said. “We could see movement with the car, and we were wondering if they put the house for sale or something, because we couldn’t see as much movement as before. But there was nothing weird about them. Nothing. Just a family.”
So routine were their lives that one neighbor noticed that the family hadn’t brought back in the garbage cans as usual on Monday. The cans were still on the curb outside 930 Monterey Blvd. on Wednesday, when the bodies were discovered inside.
A manager at Mudpuppy on Castro, a pet-grooming business, recalled the family’s regular visits over the last four years for their dog Mango. She was “a really good girl” who always “got her ears dyed,” the manager said. The news of the deaths was “heartbreaking,” she said. A spokesperson for San Francisco Animal Care & Control said Thursday that its officers had not taken a dog from the address into their care.
Evan Bloom, co-owner of Wise Sons Deli, said Truong and Ocheltree gave him one of his first breaks in the restaurant industry in 2010, when they allowed him to lease the first location of his business, on 24th Street in the Mission, without a personal guarantee. The couple owned the property and lived above the retail space, and would often come downstairs to spend time with Bloom and his team, he recalled.
Even after they sold the building, Bloom would regularly run into the family at school district events and the Stonestown Farmers Market. The two families recently ran into each other while on vacation in Hawaii.
Bloom, who lives blocks away from the family, saw the squad cars in front of the home and spent the evening trawling news sites and social media for answers.
“They were a completely warm, normal family from what I could see,” Bloom said. “What happened was just so tragic and terrible.”