7:15 p.m.SACRAMENTO — Former U.S. Marine Ron Muzio served his country in the Korean War, but on Wednesday he had another battle to fight.

The aged, mostly paralyzed Veterans Home of California at Yountville resident rolled his motorized wheelchair in front of a packed meeting of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee at the State Capitol to say he has received substandard care at the Vets Home.

“I lay in my feces in the ward for two hours,” Muzio said.

His story and complaints about care from other members of the Home spurred the legislative audit committee Wednesday to all but vote to launch top-to-bottom probe of health care at the 550-acre home, the state’s largest geriatric facility. California State Auditor Elain Howle said the probe would take five months. One member of the committee was absent Wednesday — so a final vote couldn’t be tallied — but is expected to vote with the rest of the bipartisan committee, who were unanimously in favor of launching the probe.

A crowd of more than 150 residents and union medical staff were on hand to listen to the audit committee, mostly in support of the probe.

The committee heard from seven people, including two vets claiming poor care, two other residents addressing other home issues, and state officials.

State Sen. Patricia Wiggins, D-Santa Rosa, called for an audit of the Veterans Home Monday after some residents and medical staff complained about poor conditions, including poor treatment of visually-impaired residents and allegations that faulty medical equipment contributed to the death of one resident.

“When you enter the grounds of the Yountville Veterans Home they’re beautiful, but when you enter the hospital it’s a different story,” Muzio said, adding floors were usually dirty — unless a team of regulators was scheduled to tour the facility — and staff were so busy at one point they neglected to change his position. Muzio said he developed a large and painful bedsore. “It’ll probably never heal completely.”

Recent surveys of the facility from the California Department of Health Services show only minor concerns by regulators trained to investigate health facilities like hospitals and nursing homes. In March, after a care scandal came to light at Walter Reed Medical Center in the nation’s capitol, Veterans Home officials cited positive reviews of their operation conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Both organizations perform independent audits of the facility each year.

This week, a team of a dozen federal officials are reviewing the facility.

No one directly affiliated with the Vets Home testified Wednesday.

J.P. Tremblay, a spokesman for the California Department of Veterans affairs, admitted that in the past the department hadn’t done what it could to provide the best care to veterans, but that recent years had shown — in survey after survey — the Veterans Home had received generally good marks from regulators. In fact, Tremblay said, the home scored at or above the state mandated ratio of 3.4 nursing hours to a patient — a key indicator of quality care that many private nursing homes struggle to reach.

A May 8 report of the California Department of Health Services — the most recent public probe of the facility — cited only “widespread deficiencies that constitute no actual harm.”

Veterans Home residents who have complained about care say they’re being called liars by facility officials. On Monday, Veterans Home Administrator Marcella McCormack said in an interview she believed the complaints were from a vocal minority of residents.

Pat Patterson, a former U.S. Marine who was wounded fighting the Japanese in World War II, told the audit committee Wednesday he was no liar.

“The discouraging thing about all this is Mr. Muzio told me (what happened to him) and I told Mr. Salopek ... then we became liars,” he said, referring to David Salopek, the head of the Allied Council, a residents’ advocacy group at the home. “I don’t lie about it. I told the truth about it.”

Some Veterans Home residents briefly spoke out against performing a probe of the facility — saying those who complained were unreliable — but were frustrated in their efforts by lawmakers, including state Sen. Denise Ducheny, D-San Diego. Ducheny’s district includes the Veterans Home of California at Chula Vista.

Ducheny said she couldn’t understand why anyone would be opposed to the audit, because if nothing was wrong it would show that.

“Doing the audit allows us to determine what’s going on,” she said. “... We’re not here to bash the home.”