Workers with records hidden

An assisted living facility sanitizes its payroll before state investigators arrive.

By THOMAS LAKE, Times Staff Writer
Published September 28, 2007

ADVERTISEMENT Diana Nathaniel, 45, a certified nursing assistant, says she was put on leave. Rachel Trubey, 23, says she was fired before the state inquiry.

NEW PORT RICHEY - A man applied for a job at a home for the elderly. He had pleaded no contest to a violent felony; he was hired nonetheless. One morning last week, police say, he lunged at an 78-year-old Alzheimer's patient and punched him in the face.

The man went to jail, but he was not the only person with a criminal record on the New Port Inn's payroll. At least two other caregivers also had records. And before state investigators arrived Tuesday to survey the facility, those caregivers were swept out of view.

"The state's gonna come in," caregiver Rachel Trubey says a supervisor told her Sept. 20, just before firing her, "they're gonna be looking at employee records, they're gonna be breathing down our necks, and we'd just feel better if you weren't around.

"You can come back to work when this all cools down."

Trubey is 23. She told the St. Petersburg Times she was hired as a resident caregiver at the New Port Inn on Congress Street about a month ago despite her record: 10 arrests in Florida, according to a state database, on charges that include domestic battery, possession of cocaine and smuggling contraband into a detention facility. Those resulted in three no-contest pleas to misdemeanor charges.

State law says that potential caregivers at assisted living facilities must pass Level 1 background screenings, which means they can be disqualified from employment if they've been convicted of certain felonies - including such crimes as murder, arson and child abuse.

It also says a domestic violence conviction can disqualify a potential hire unless the state grants a special exemption.

Trubey's record includes a plea of no contest to misdemeanor domestic battery. It was unclear Thursday whether she had obtained the exemption.

"They hired me first," she said, "then did the background check."

New Port Inn officials would not answer a reporter's questions Monday, Wednesday or Thursday.

"We're still investigating the situation," regional operations director Ken Homer said Wednesday.

In addition to Trubey, the facility employed Diana Nathaniel, 45, a Port Richey woman with two drug possession pleas on her record. Sixteen years have passed since Nathaniel's most recent arrest in Florida. Nevertheless, Nathaniel said, facility administrator Susan Hines put her on indefinite leave Sept. 20, hours after the patient's beating.

"We cannot keep you on the schedule and on the floor at this time," Hines said, according to Nathaniel, who earned $8.50 an hour as a certified nursing assistant.

Nathaniel was crestfallen. She said she enjoys bathing the elderly and changing their diapers. She said the New Port Inn is an excellent place to work. She showed a reporter her state nursing license, good through the end of December.

"I want my job," she said.

On Wednesday, Hines told the Times, "I'm not going to discuss any other employee."

The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, which licenses assisted living facilities, said there have been 14 complaints against New Port Inn since 1998 but would not give details of the complaints or their resolution. The agency opened an investigation of the facility Tuesday, five days after caregiver William Charewicz was arrested and charged with punching a 78-year-old Alzheimer's patient in the face and shoving him against a wall with a forearm pressed to his throat.

Charewicz, 54, pleaded no contest to the 1992 battery of a Pasco County sheriff's deputy.

This alone would not automatically disqualify him from working at an assisted living facility.

But the disqualification list also includes felony theft.

State records show that Charewicz was sentenced to four years of community supervision for felony theft March 27.

Applicants can ask for an exemption if more than three years have passed since the date of the offense.

But, according to Nathaniel, the New Port Inn hired Charewicz around May or June.

That's fewer than six months after his most recent felony.

Times researcher Shirl Kennedy contributed to this report. Thomas Lake can be reached at tlake@sptimes.com or toll-free 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6245.

[Last modified September 27, 2007, 22:07:33]