Robert Scott McCubbins didn’t have a lot of visitors.
The 56-year-old veteran lived in a Hazel Dell apartment complex, where neighbors knew him as “Mr. Rob.” Down the street, at the Safeway grocery store where he was a regular, staff knew him and his service dog — a black Lab named Hooch.
“He was a nice, quiet old man. He’s been there for years,” said Virginia Sorenson, a neighbor at Willow Creek Apartments. “None of us can remember anyone visiting.”
She described McCubbins as having a slight build, dark scruffy hair and a beard. He wore a military hat and walked with a limp. He looked a little older than he was.
“He’d walk his dog every day around the complex,” Sorenson said. He’d wave to everyone and stop to chat.
Then he’d walk to Safeway, where the duo did the rounds. Everyone knew Mr. Rob and Hooch.
“He was just a guy that I could tell didn’t have a whole lot of people around him,” said Lynn Goss, an employee at the grocery store.
McCubbins was estranged from his family, who lived in Illinois. When he was discovered at 9:15 a.m. on Nov. 26, dead in his apartment, first responders suspected he’d been there a few days. His death certificate listed the cause as complications of chronic ethanol abuse with dilated cardiomyopathy, liver with steatosis and fibrosis — he died from drinking.
“We got to the apartment and knocked on the door and identified ourselves, no answer. Put the key in the lock and turned it, there was a chain inside,” said Dea Pittman, the property manager at the apartment complex. “We looked down, and there was Hooch looking at us. At that point, we knew what we were going to find.”
As deaths go, McCubbins’ lonely departure strikes as particularly sad. But it also stirred a sincere response in the little network he had built for himself over the years. Quietly, that network sprung to action, organizing a veteran’s memorial and finding a home for Hooch.
So McCubbins’ story is one about loneliness. But it’s also about the opposite.
Remembering a vet
A few days after McCubbins’ body was found, Sorenson, his neighbor, posted on a community Facebook page:
“Kind of a sad question. But does anyone know what our county does with a deceased person that no one claims?” she wrote. “A respected elderly veteran neighbor passed away this week, and we want to make sure that he still gets his military burial.”
Not a lot is known about McCubbins’ military record. His death certificate confirmed that he’d served in the U.S. Armed Forces, but The Columbian’s attempts to access official documents detailing his service record were stymied by the ongoing federal government shutdown — the National Personnel Records Center, which releases service dates, discharge details and award eligibility, isn’t currently staffed.
Judy Russel, president of the Clark County Veterans Assistance Center, could confirm that she processed a disability claim for McCubbins through the American Legion several years ago.
However, his network of neighbors and acquaintances gathered bits and pieces of information about his military experience.
Goss said he had served in the Navy, and offered her son some advice when he enlisted with the Marines.
Pittman said he told her he’d worked on a submarine.
“I know he was on a nuclear sub. I don’t know what his position was — he didn’t talk about that,” Pittman said.
According to McCubbins’ death certificate, his body was claimed by a family member and cremated at Evergreen Memorial Gardens’ crematory. The family member did not respond to The Columbian’s attempts to contact him through the funeral home. Evergreen Memorial’s website lists information about funeral services and obituaries linked to each of its deceased clients, and none were listed for McCubbins.
“We just wanted to make sure he got taken care of,” Sorenson said.
A veteran herself, Sorenson said it’s important that McCubbins is publicly thanked for his service, even if he’s not around to witness it.
“I served in the military and I served two years in AmeriCorps. And to me, when a citizen makes a dedication to their country … not everybody can give that kind of commitment or sacrifice,” Sorenson said.
It matters, she added. It just does.
“It’s a way for a community to acknowledge them when they say goodbye.”
A home for Hooch
McCubbins’ closeness with the staff at his local grocery store might have been unusual, but it was sincere.
In 2017, Goss, the Safeway cashier, invited him over to her house for Thanksgiving dinner. He didn’t take her up on it, but he was welcome, she said.
“He was just one of those guys that you looked at him, and you just knew that he needed someone to be nice,” Goss said.
A few months ago, he’d suffered a medical event while at Safeway and had to be taken away by ambulance. Hooch was taken in by Clark County Animal Control.
Goss raised the money to have Hooch released. She picked up McCubbins from the hospital, took him to reclaim his dog and paid the impound fee.
In the end, it was the connection between Safeway, McCubbins and Hooch that led to the discovery of his body on Nov. 26.
A few days earlier, he’d called the store and asked that they deliver some dog food to his house because he wasn’t feeling well enough to go pick it up — an unorthodox request to make of a chain grocery store, but one the staff agreed to because they knew him so well.
When a Safeway employee came over to drop off the food, McCubbins didn’t answer the door.
“On Monday, when she came back to work, they started talking among themselves and realized nobody had heard or seen him since that phone call, so they called us and asked for a wellness check,” Pittman said. “He passed away, we believe, on Friday.”
Goss lives with an adult daughter who also works at the Safeway. McCubbins used to joke that they would be the ones to take in Hooch if something were to happen to him.
So they did. Goss adopted Hooch from the Humane Society for Southwest Washington in early December.
Hooch is thriving, she said, and recovering from the trauma of losing his person. He’s adapting to living at her home with two other dogs. And she’ll occasionally put on his service vest and bring him into work — familiar territory for the most popular dog from that little corner of Hazel Dell.
“When I got him, all my co-workers there were really excited, and they all pitched in to help pay the adoption fee,” Goss said.
