Alone in the Dark

Cochise Health Systems had starved us out. Now that our contract had been taken away, they assigned our clients to Evercare and Heartfelt Help. Since Cochise Health Systems had begun soliciting our caregivers before our contract was pulled, we urged our caregivers not to be unemployed because of loyalty to us, and to keep working to support their families. (We believe that Evercare and Heartfelt Help got the best crew in the world handed to them on a silver platter by Cochise Health Systems). All our employees were fingerprinted (which Cochise Health and the other companies did not require), CPR/First aide certified, and each one of them oriented and hands-on trained to excellence.

It was all gone – the treasured “government contract,” our friends/employees, our clients – all of our business just GONE, amid a flurry of untruths and finger pointing.

Evercare (United Health) got quite a deal for carrying payrolls for a while. They received over one hundred jobs, complete with employees, in one fell-swoop. Our company was used as a bargaining chip by Cochise Health Systems. All that we had worked for was placed upon the table in trade. The only thing x’d out was Carolyn and me. We were alone in the dark.

Being unaware that the entire AHCCCS system was in on this, I began bombarding their main Phoenix office with phone calls and emails, while Carolyn sat in our darkened office waiting for a phone that never rang.

Phoenix did not respond; when I insisted that they see us, they allowed me (Carolyn would not leave the phone) to visit and talk to three men from their legal department. The men seemed disinterested, and viewed my passion for what happened to us at the hands of Cochise Health Systems with impatient eyes, as though they already knew all about my story and couldn’t wait for me to leave because they had bigger fish to fry. At that time, I did not know that my little fish had already been battered, fried, served and eaten, and they were dealing with the preparation of the whale that they were in the process of serving to the citizens of Arizona.

After my meeting with the AHCCCS reps, it must have been concluded that we were of no threat to them, for they answered no more phone calls and blocked all emails.

Utilities began disappearing – lights, heat – basic necessities. I walked in the desert for hours with my dogs and my Bible, praying and crying. Then I would come home and David and I would drink coffee and play our guitars. He felt awful for both of us; and he felt worthless. With tears in his eyes, one day he said to me, “I serve no useful purpose.” This from a man who had supported his family in fine style for years, working as an aerospace engineer!

I reassured him over and over, but he was disconsolate; for some reason, he felt that he had let me down. Carolyn still waited by the phone. All day…every day… through 2003 and 2004. It never rang.

In April of 2003, we contacted an attorney from Tucson to help us, not realizing that the state of Arizona was the co-culprit of Cochise County, not realizing that the NCFE bankruptcy was a national secret, and not realizing that “Right” and “Justice” would never prevail.

Throughout the next three years, as the “lawsuit” drug on and on, our eyes slowly opened and we began to see what was happening. We never received justice; we never were afforded “due process of law;” we were never even in court!

The litigation itself was a confusing dance, leading everyone down first one tangent, then another, digressing into drivel, and always purposely avoiding the real truth, the law and justice. The entire litigational process was orchestrated exactly as Cochise Health Systems orchestrated the delay (and subsequent non-payment) of our billing – smoke screens, confusion and chaos – all designed to avoid the real crux of the issues, and to buy time for the county, state and others involved to come up with something “better.”

The price that the county paid to hire an outside attorney from Phoenix should be added to the amount that the county misappropriated; certainly, funds supplied to make mockery of justice and create confusion, rather than to legitimately defend, by confronting the real issues, cannot be a legitimate expense for the taxpayers of Cochise County to bear.

Our attorney was not our attorney. I cannot make an accusation that I cannot prove, but with all my heart I know that he was working as an attorney for the county and state, under their protection, to prevent our prevailing in the legal process and, more importantly to the county and state, to perpetuate the secret of the loss of Medicaid funds through the LGIPs. Our attorney worked so well for the advantage of the county and state that he gave our entire case the illusion of frivolity. I am sure that the citizens of Cochise County and the state of Arizona will agree that there is nothing frivolous about designated funding for our ill and elderly, already degraded by all the hands reaching into the delivery process, being thrown away by the county on a bad investment.

As time passed, in the case of Angel Team vs. Cochise County, we became the defendants rather than the plaintiffs.

Little did I know that the worst was yet to come. Little did I know that before the end of 2004, I, without David and Carolyn, would truly be alone in the dark.