The Day the Angels Cried

We were broke, no doubt about it. In considering the entire situation, I decided that we could not keep our contract much longer without some intervention; it seemed unlikely that a mountain of money would rain down on Angel Team.

On Wednesday, February 26,2003, Cochise Health Systems began calling our clients’ homes and speaking with our contracted (to us) caregivers. They told our employees that “Angel Team is filing bankruptcy and won’t be in business very long,” and, “if they wanted to keep working, they would have to sign on with Evercare or Heartfelt Help.”

I reasoned that Cochise Health Systems could not legally solicit our contracted employees for a “favored” company. I would later research the Sherman Act and anti-trust laws, which confirmed that they could not legally do that. But they did.

We have since been told that Heartfelt Help went under Evercare’s “wing” for awhile, since Evercare is a huge conglomerate known to the world as United Health, and therefore, capable of handling both payrolls for a long time. I cannot prove this, but it seems logical.

Our entire company was in mourning. Our employees did not want to leave us, and we did not want Cochise Health Systems’ Doomsday Prophecy for us to come true.

On Friday morning, February 28, 2003, I went alone to the offices of Cochise Health Systems – to beg, bargain or borrow time – I just knew that something had to be done. Fast.

The reception staff of Cochise Health Systems seemed surprised to see me. When I told them that I needed to see Dee Dee Pederson, the Director of Cochise Health Systems, they were all aflutter, not knowing what to do – it was clear that they were unprepared for my visit and did not know if Dee Dee would see me.

I was seated to wait in the reception area, but walked back to the restroom to splash cold water on my face. The mirror told no kind lies; I looked beaten, hungry and hopeless. “I look like
I just crawled out of a dumpster in the back of a Circle K,” I mused to my reflection.

In contrast to my humility and hopelessness, Dee Dee was confident and flippant, leaning back in her chair and eyeing me coldly, a stone figurehead whose own job was the only thing on her mind.

I sat down across the desk from her, hugging my purse to my belly to try to stop the wild beating of my heart. “Dee Dee,” I implored her. “Please don’t do this.”

“Would you be willing to drop Carolyn?” She slammed me right in the stomach with that one.

“Drop Carolyn?” I was incredulous. Was this a case of 1920s, cross burning, Alabama bred, KKK, non-affirmative action prejudice?

“No,” I replied firmly. “I will never do that.” I swallowed hard and continued (not having a clue about “Carolyn” - Carolyn – for Pete’s sake! Was she trying to divert any bloodhounds that I might have on the trail?) “Please don’t make us lose everything we’ve worked so hard for.”

She stared at me, obviously enjoying this moment of absolute power. “Who runs the Safford Sector?”

“I do,” I replied truthfully.

“And the Douglas Sector?”

“I do,” I lied through my teeth. That she, for some unknown reason, hated my partner was obvious.

“Well, I just might let you keep those two sectors; that is, if you align with another company without Carolyn.”

I had no clue as to why she wanted me to align with another company. Of course, now it is all crystal-clear, but that day in Dee Dee’s office, my mind was spinning out of control and I could not grasp the spaces between the lines of what she was saying.

“Write me up a letter stating that you will correct any problems that you are having and that you, personally, will oversee billing. Have it on my desk by Monday morning.”

On the drive back to Sierra Vista, I cried like a two-year old. How could I tell Carolyn all this? She was so sensitive; this could destroy part of her. I wouldn’t tell her yet, I thought. I would just tell her that we could keep the Safford and Douglas sectors.

When I reached our office, Carolyn came running out to meet me. “Mary, Jane from Heartfelt Help is blowing up the phone for you.”

I was sick to my stomach. “I don’t want to talk to anyone,” I said, and put my head down on my desk. (Looking back, not answering Jane's call was the fatal blow for our company. Months later, Cochise Health's head case manager, Maureen, told my former office manager, Julie Romero, "If only she had have aligned with Jane (under Evercare, I presume)!"

That night, I wrote the letter that Dee Dee had demanded. I emailed it to her, and called her office at eight a.m. Monday, March 3, 2003 and told her secretary that the letter was there, on her computer.

On Monday afternoon, March 3, 2003, Cochise Health Systems faxed a letter to us terminating our contract for “financial insolubility.”