Presley Gerber Is Cremated Before a Cause of Death

Presley Gerber was cremated five days after he died in a Santa Monica bedroom, and the death certificate still has no cause. He was 27. The same paper calls him an entrepreneur who worked in mental health and sends his ashes to Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber’s house in Malibu.

The house where he died is not a licensed rehab. It is a $7.7 million recovery residence on Berkeley Street that California does not oversee as treatment, and the state opened a file on that distinction only after he was already gone.

The Death Certificate Calls Him an Entrepreneur

The certificate, obtained after the Los Angeles County exam, says he was cremated at Rose Family Funeral Home. Occupation is listed as an entrepreneur in mental health. Disposition is the Malibu house he grew up visiting as Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber’s son, and as Kaia Gerber’s older brother.

That job line matches the public work he tried to build after modeling. He signed with IMG Models at 15, walked for houses including Moschino, Calvin Klein, Dolce & Gabbana, Burberry and Bottega Veneta, and appeared with his mother in a Pepsi Super Bowl spot in 2018. In the last three years he talked less about clothes and more about panic, pills, and the wish to help other people leave the place he had been.

He started a series he called Mental Health Mondays. He told the Studio 22 podcast in 2023 that the work was a 24/7 job. Friends have said he had been looking at psychology and addiction counseling as a next chapter. The certificate froze that ambition as a job title, then stopped. Cause of death is deferred, pending investigation.

THE FILE IN BRIEF

• Age: He was 27 when paramedics pronounced him dead at 9:45 a.m. on September 20, 2026.
• Case number: The county medical examiner logged the death as 2026-14977.
• Home value: Resolutions Living sits in a $7.7 million Santa Monica house with 7 bedrooms and 9 bathrooms.
• Clock: He checked in Saturday night, September 19, and was dead the next morning.

A family representative asked for privacy during a very difficult and painful time. Funeral plans have stayed private. People close to the family have talked about a small service and have named Forest Lawn and Malibu Presbyterian Church as options, with no date announced.

One Night on Berkeley Street Was Enough

Santa Monica police were called to the 1000 block of Berkeley Street at about 9:35 a.m. on Sunday, September 20. Dispatch audio described cardiac arrest and an overdose. Paramedics pronounced him dead at 9:45 a.m. Detectives later said they were treating the death as a suspected overdose and that they had no indication of foul play.

He had arrived the night before. Early accounts of the check-in described him as appearing intoxicated, which is not rare at the door of a recovery house and is also the detail that now sits at the center of the state’s questions. Resolutions Living is the residential arm tied to Resolutions Therapeutic Services, an outpatient shop on Wilshire Boulevard that runs partial hospitalization and intensive outpatient programs for mental health, trauma, addiction, and dual diagnosis.

The company’s own FAQ says the clinical team works with several local transitional homes, including Resolutions LIVING down the street, walking distance from the Wilshire office at 2001 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 505. It calls those residences luxurious and structured. A program page promises chef-prepared meals and 24/7 support from staff. The same FAQ draws a harder line for people who still need detox: clients without enough clean time are supposed to be referred to residential drug and alcohol centers so they can be medically supervised under 24-hour nursing care.

If he was still under the influence when he walked in, that referral language is the document that now reads against the house. A recovery residence is allowed to offer a bed, house rules, and a pledge to stay off alcohol and other drugs. It is not supposed to be the place that manages withdrawal.

The founder of both operations is Reza Nabavi, a licensed clinical psychologist whose company page names him Founder and Executive Clinical Director. The bio lists more than 20 years of clinical work, a doctorate from the California School of Professional Psychology, and earlier leadership at residential programs in Malibu and West Los Angeles, including a stretch as director of family services at Promises Malibu. He opened the Resolutions operation in 2013. California Board of Psychology records show a bumpier start: drug convictions in 2002, a denied registration in 2004, a psychological-assistant registration in January 2006 that was revoked and stayed the next month, a psychologist registration in December 2006 on probation, and early termination of that probation in May 2008. The license is listed as active through June 30, 2028. Nabavi did not answer questions after the death.

California Does Not License That House

On Friday, September 25, the California Department of Health Care Services said it had opened an inquiry into Resolutions Living after a complaint from rehab-reform advocate Jennifer Turner, whose daughter was hurt at an unrelated treatment center in 2016. DHCS spokesman Anthony Cava said the department does not license sober living homes and would look at one only to see whether it was operating as an unlicensed treatment facility in violation of state law.

That is the whole California design. Health and Safety Code section 11834.01 gives DHCS the sole authority to license treatment facilities for adult alcohol and other drug recovery. A peer house that provides none of the listed clinical services sits outside that chapter. There is no statewide roster. Certification through a trade group is voluntary. Cities can still demand business permits and fire-code compliance, and Santa Monica spent the past year arguing over unpermitted recovery housing on Ocean Avenue, but a recovery residence that stays on the housing side of the line does not get a DHCS inspection until someone alleges the line was crossed.

WHERE THE LICENSE LINE RUNS

Turner’s complaint asked whether a 27-year-old man who entered seeking help, and was dead the following morning, had been taken into a setting that was not authorized to provide detox, withdrawal management, or residential substance-use treatment. She pointed to website language about a mental health recovery residence, individual recovery plans, a three-phase recovery program, and 24/7 onsite staff, and she asked who assessed him, who admitted him, and whether anyone was watching his medical condition overnight.

Licensing consultant Angela McMahon has said the outpatient arm sits in a gray zone because it presents as a mental health program while advertising addiction treatment and relapse prevention. Resolutions Therapeutic Services is also not licensed by DHCS. If the state finds that either shop provided licensable alcohol-or-drug services without a license, the civil penalty is $2,000 per day after a cease notice, plus a five-year bar on initial licensure.

SERVICES THAT TURN A HOUSE INTO A TREATMENT FACILITY

• Detoxification: Withdrawal management on a 24-hour residential basis requires a DHCS license.
• Sessions: Individual, group, or educational sessions on recovery or drug problems count as licensable services.
• Planning and medical extras: Recovery or treatment planning, and incidental medical services, also trip the statute.

DHCS’s own complaints page repeats the split in plain English: cooperative living with a pledge to stay off alcohol and other drugs does not need its license; 24-hour non-medical residential alcoholism or drug-abuse recovery or treatment services do. The inquiry does not decide how Gerber died. It asks whether the house was allowed to take him in the shape he arrived.

What the Medical Examiner Has Withheld

A deputy medical examiner examined him on Monday, September 21, and released the body after that exam. Cremation after release is ordinary in Los Angeles County. It is not a finding. It also means the physical body is gone while the official cause is still a blank.

A deputy medical examiner performed an examination today and the cause and manner of death have been deferred, which means additional testing and/or studies were requested in order to make a determination. Due to the ongoing death investigation, the DME cannot disclose what testing and/or studies were requested. Deferred cases can take a few months before a cause of death is determined.

County of Los Angeles Department of Medical Examiner, September 21, 2026, case 2026-14977

The same statement said he was pronounced dead at 09:45 hours on September 20 by responding paramedics, named the Santa Monica Police Department as the investigating agency, and said the cause and manner of death have been deferred. Police can call a death a suspected overdose on the day they arrive. The examiner does not have to agree until the lab work is in. Those are different documents, and only one of them will fill the cause line.

THE WEEK THE FILE OPENED

1. September 19, 2026: He arrives at Resolutions Living on Berkeley Street on Saturday night.
2. September 20, 2026: Officers respond about 9:35 a.m. to cardiac arrest and an overdose; paramedics pronounce him dead at 9:45 a.m.
3. September 21, 2026: The county exam is completed; cause and manner are deferred; police confirm a suspected overdose and no sign of foul play.
4. September 25, 2026: DHCS opens an inquiry into whether the house provided unlicensed treatment; the death certificate shows cremation at Rose Family Funeral Home and ashes headed to Malibu.

Private supervision in the days before the check-in has been described as close, including a sober coach on the ride over. That kind of staffing is a sign of how much danger was already in the room. It is not a license, and it is not 24-hour nursing. The county still has not said what was in his blood.

He Called Mental Health a 24/7 Job

The gap between the job title on the certificate and the bedroom on Berkeley Street is not a surprise he left unrecorded. He had been narrating the same bind in public for years, in the tight, unguarded register of someone trying to talk other men into staying.

Having struggled with mental health, depression and some other things that come along with that, I think that whether I help one person or a hundred people get out of that place that I was in at one point in my life, that’s all I need to do. [Mental health] is an issue. It is such a big part of my life. It’s a 24/7 job, and there’s so much to it. That’s really what I want to do: help people.

Presley Gerber, Studio 22 podcast, 2023

In a December 2025 Instagram video he later deleted, he said he had seen 15 psychiatrists and laid out a stack of medications that included opiates, benzodiazepines, antidepressants, blood-pressure drugs, ketamine drips, gabapentin, Xanax at night for panic, Valium in the morning, and 1 mg of buprenorphine. He said the doses moved around with his life. He wanted a doctor to tell him to take a pill three times a day. He said he did not want that much freedom.

“All these doctors say a lot of different things, so it’s kind of scary, but hopefully between my research and their research and God, we can figure this out,” he said in that video. In November 2025 he had already stepped back from posting, writing that he had to take care of his own mental health for a bit and that Mental Health Mondays existed “to spark real conversations about the stuff most people hide.”

On March 26, 2026, he posted from Cancún before an ibogaine flood dose, a psychedelic treatment that is not legal in the United States and is sold in Mexican clinics as a way to interrupt opioid withdrawal. “I faced what I had been running from, and somewhere in all of it, i started finding my way back to myself,” he wrote. “Praying it’s the last time I have to come back.” He thanked the staff and the friends he made. He used the tags for iboga, rewiring the brain, and mental health. It was one of his last long posts.

He had a 2019 DUI in Beverly Hills, pleaded no contest, and received three years of probation and a DUI program. The legal file is the public marker. The videos are the private one he chose to show: a young man on a rotating list of doctors, chasing a taper, then a clinic in Mexico, then a luxury recovery residence a few miles from his parents’ house.

Ashes Stay in Malibu While a Service Is Planned

Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber have kept the family circle small. Kaia Gerber, 25, has been with them. Longtime friends George and Amal Clooney have been moving between Crawford’s house and Kaia’s. Actor Laura Dern and influencer Jake Shane have also been described as offering support. That does not change the paperwork. The ashes are at the Malibu house. The cause line is still deferred. DHCS’s questions about Berkeley Street started on September 25, after the cremation was already on the certificate.

A small service is being planned. Forest Lawn and Malibu Presbyterian Church have been mentioned by people familiar with the arrangements, and the family has not confirmed a time or a guest list. That is their right, and it is also why the public file now matters more than a eulogy. The police suspicion, the deferred exam, and the state’s licensing inquiry are the three facts that will still be true when the service is over.

His own standard was modest. He said helping one person, or a hundred, would be enough. The death certificate borrowed that ambition and called it a job. The house on Berkeley Street borrowed the language of recovery and did not need a treatment license to open the door. His ashes are at the Malibu house, and case 2026-14977 is still waiting on tests.