Mateo Emiliano Rumble

Mateo Emiliano Rumble was born May 9th, 1979, but he found his family at age three when he was adopted by William Rumble and Carol Jacques Rumble. He died of Huntington’s Disease on October 16th, 2025. He was forty-six years old.

He attended Mt. Washington and Good Shepherd Lutheran Elementary Schools followed by Incarnation Parish School. During his elementary and middle school years, he exhibited interest in both visual and performing arts. He starred in The Nutcracker two years in a row as the title character, later showing more interest in drawing and painting. He even played saxophone for a few years.

But it wasn’t until Mateo enrolled at Salesian High School that he truly found himself. The brotherhood fostered amongst those boys found him excelling in Speech and developing his sketching talent by creating caricatures and cartoons of Salesian faculty and staff, a talent that won him both worrisome attention from faculty as well as positive attention from his peers. Yet through minor struggles near the beginning of his high school career, he excelled academically, earning honors and distinctions, including a spot in the honors society, Speech recognitions, and at graduation a History award. And it was at Salesian that he received his Confirmation of Faith, a deeply meaningful sacrament.

During his time at Salesian, he was diagnosed with Schizo-Affective Disorder. Difficult as that was, he and his family found much support in the connections of his high school community.

Soon, he was accepted at Cal State Los Angeles. But his heart had then turned to childcare, and he earned a Certificate of Childcare at the East Los Angeles Occupational Center. It was during his time at Child Development Centers of Los Angeles that he was able to show his nurturing, perhaps even the nurturing he had missed before his adoption, a full circle moment for him.

Following his stint in childcare, Mateo wound up in board and care facilities to provide the structure his mental illness dictated that his family no longer could provide. It was during his first years at board and care that he received the assumed diagnosis of tardive dyskinesia, a common side effect of antipsychotics. And during this same time he befriended a Buddhist abbot at the temple down the street from his board and care, coming to acceptance of the many circumstances out of his control. As his assumed T.D. progressed, he did end up in progressively higher-level nursing homes.

In April 2024, he was finally correctly diagnosed with Huntington’s Disease, an exceptionally rare genetic neurodegenerative disease, a disease so rare that it receives very little research funding. And in July of 2024, he was moved to Archwood House in Valley Glen (Van Nuys) where he and his family were blessed to find an aggregate nursing home full of diverse residents and nursing staff who made only the most positive difference in what would be his last 15 months.

Mateo is survived by his parents, William and Carol Rumble; his brother, Lawrence Escobedo; his sister, Maya Rumble Pacheco; and his nephew and nieces, William, Anael, and Grier Pacheco. It is their wish that through sharing his story, we might raise awareness of Huntington’s Disease in the hope that those few sharing this disease might receive diagnosis sooner, that those researchers studying it might receive more funding, and that one day soon a cure might be found.

In lieu of flowers, family requests memorial donations to the Huntington’s Disease Society of America. https://hdsa.org/get-involved/tribute-memorial-donations/