Michael Healy, the sober coach who accompanied Presley Gerber to the Santa Monica residence where the model later died in what authorities suspect was an overdose, has largely disappeared from public view in the weeks since, according to friends who spoke with Our News Outlet.
“He’s going through hell,” said Dirk Eldredge, Healy’s mentor and former employer.
People close to the 34-year-old said he has remained inside his Marina del Rey, California, apartment while grieving the loss of Gerber, 27, whom Eldredge described as both a client and a close friend of Healy’s.
Gerber died on September 20, just hours after Healy helped him check into the sober-living facility Resolutions Living.
“Mike brought him to Resolutions and had absolutely zero control over what happened after,” Eldredge told Our News Outlet.
Healy has not answered requests for comment. Friends from his personal and professional circles said they had not heard from him for weeks. He was reportedly seen in public for the first time last Wednesday, when he stopped for coffee in Los Angeles.
Presley Gerber, 27, was found dead in what authorities suspect was an overdose, one day after entering a rehab facility. Photo source: presleygerber/Instagram
Michael Healy, 34, has been identified as the sober coach and self-described addiction and recovery expert who accompanied Gerber to a Santa Monica sober-living facility. However, Our News Outlet found no record of a license issued in his name in Colorado, where he previously lived. Photo source: Mike Healy/Facebook
Friends said Healy, pictured making a coffee run in Los Angeles this month, has kept a low profile since Gerber’s death
“He has been taking time for himself, given everything that happened,” said Theren Raufmann, founder and CEO of The Little Beach House, a men’s sober-living home in Venice Beach that lists Healy as a “recovery coach and case manager.”
TMZ, citing unnamed sources, reported that Gerber’s sober coach—without identifying Healy—called Resolutions staff and said Gerber was high before he left him at the facility.
The outlet also reported that Gerber’s family had neither been informed about nor approved the facility choice. Our News Outlet has not independently verified either claim.
Eldredge said he was aware of the reports but strongly rejected any suggestion that Healy was responsible for Gerber’s death, calling the claim “absolutely, positively false.”
According to Eldredge, Healy’s role ended when Gerber, following his encouragement, “walked through the front door.”
“People are looking for somebody to fault or place blame,” Eldredge said. “If someone wants to use, they’re going to use.”
Eldredge said Healy has remained in contact with Gerber’s parents, supermodel Cindy Crawford and businessman Rande Gerber, since their son’s death. He claimed the couple was “very thankful for what Mike did.”
A representative for Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber did not respond to requests for comment from Our News Outlet. The couple and their 25-year-old model daughter, Kaia Gerber, have asked the public to respect their privacy.
It remains unknown whether Gerber’s parents approved sending him to a sober-living home rather than a state-regulated medical treatment center, or who recommended the facility. It is also unclear whether any other sober coaches were involved with the family at the time.
Presley Gerber was found dead on September 20 at the Resolutions Living facility in Santa Monica
The facility is situated in an upscale Santa Monica neighborhood behind a gated entrance
A recovering addict himself, Healy (seen in an old photo) has spoken publicly on podcasts of his own battle, revealing he once sold his body for drugs while living on LA’s Skid Row. Photo source: Mike Healy/Facebook
Experts told us that sober coaches are often recovering addicts who are familiar with the temptations and other challenges their clients are up against.
‘Most of these people do what they do because they understand on a cellular level the compulsion to find a temporal escape from permanent trauma,’ Eldredge said.
Healy worked with Gerber for ‘years, not days, weeks or months,’ according to Eldredge.
He said Healy’s role ranged from being a regular companion to accompanying Gerber on trips between New York and Los Angeles to ‘advocate for his healing.’
According to Eldredge, it took ‘months and months’ to persuade Gerber to get help.
Eldredge called Resolutions Living a ‘very credible, very strong clinical environment.’ The sober living residence does not offer medical treatment on site, and California’s Department of Health Care Services says it requires no license or agency oversight.
Healy describes himself on LinkedIn as an addiction and recovery expert, interventionist, family recovery advocate and sober companion. He runs Healy Family Services, a company based out of his home in Marina del Rey.
California Secretary of State records show he founded it as Mike Healy Consulting LLC in 2024, then changed its name to MH Case Management LLC in 2025 before changing its name yet again this year, 18 days before Gerber’s death.
Eldredge said he met Healy when Healy sought help for his own addiction issues at Jaywalker Lodge, the rehab center Eldredge used to run near Aspen, Colorado.
Healy later worked there, processing admissions paperwork, conducting drug testing and administering medication, according to his LinkedIn page.
Healy’s mentor and former employer Dirk Eldredge called any suggestion that Healy bears responsibility for Gerber’s death ‘absolutely, positively false.’ Photo source: Eldredge Recovery Resources
Gerber (above in New York in 2019) had been open about his struggles with drug addiction and mental health, publicly speaking about medication in December
The model’s parents, Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber, were desperate for their son to get help, our source said. Above, Presley with his parents and his sister Kaia Gerber in May
Healy has spoken openly about his own history, saying in 2024 on the podcast Sicker Than Others that he began using drugs as a young teen.
He was using opiates, heroin, fentanyl, Xanax, cocaine and meth by his mid-teens – a trajectory that in some ways mirrored Gerber’s, who said he started using some of the same drugs after becoming a model at 15.
‘I’m a garbage disposal man, so anything on the table I’m gonna do,’ Healy said on the podcast, noting that he had been kicked out of four high schools by age 17.
By 25, he said, he had been arrested at least seven times, been locked up in a few psych wards and attended 32 treatment programs.
Healy spoke of reaching rock bottom and living for a spell on Los Angeles’ Skid Row where he was selling his body to both men and women for drugs.
He acknowledged having a sex addiction, saying he craved the affection he lacked from his ‘workaholic’ parents growing up.
‘That’s where I felt I deserved to be,’ he said, describing his sense of himself then as ‘the scum of the earth, piece of s**t, hopeless.’
‘I was hellbent on using until I died or until I killed myself,’ Healy said.
Healy didn’t correct the podcast interviewer for assuming, when Healy told him he was from Boston, that he came from a tough neighborhood.
But public records show he grew up in a stately home, in the posh enclave of Brookline, that sold for $3.6 million in 2015.
They also show that during his time in Colorado, he lived in a $890,000 vacation home near Aspen owned by his parents.
By 2018, Gerber was already a top model as he walked the Prabal Gurung fashion show during New York Fashion Week
The son of a Harvard Business School professor who teaches courses on business ethics and white collar crime, Healy said on the podcast that he was a partner in the Little Beach House, but public records show no ownership interest.
That sober house’s website calls him a ‘licensed addiction counselor’ even though California doesn’t license addiction counselors.
Asked about the license claim, Raufmann said Healy is licensed as an addiction counselor in Colorado.
The Daily Mail’s search of Colorado’s licensing registry found no current or former addiction counselor license under his name. It did, however, show a pharmacy technician license in 2021 that expired 18 months later.
Both California and Colorado certify substance use disorder counselors through accredited bodies, but a preliminary check of registries showed no sign of Healy being certified.
The Daily Mail has called and emailed Healy with questions about his credentials, but he has not responded.
Gerber is believed to have checked in to Resolutions Living around 10pm on Saturday, September 19, according to a law enforcement source who spoke to NBC News.
Video obtained by Page Six shows him, presumably that evening, filming a bedroom and a balcony.
Santa Monica police responded to a call around 9.35am Sunday and found him dead.
Authorities are investigating it as a suspected overdose and say there is no indication of foul play. Autopsy and toxicology results have not been released.
Once they are, two addiction experts who have no connection to Healy told us the results are likely to shed light on whether Gerber was already high when Healy helped him check in to the sober home or got high after Healy left.
‘Ethically and maybe even legally, that’s the million-dollar question,’ one said.
