Life on her own
Simple act of defiance puts a woman's life back on track

Karen McKinney, has trouble getting around on her own. Confined to a wheelchair, she has suffered through negligent caretakers and abandonment by her family. But thanks to some friends, neighbors and her service dog Greta, she may finally get the care she desperately needs. — © 2009 Gallup Independent / Adron Gardner

Copyright © 2009
Gallup Independent
By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Staff writer

GALLUP — For Karen McKinney, April 24 has turned out to be a red letter day in her life.

With a simple act of defiance, McKinney began fighting for herself — as much as a 56-year-old disabled woman who is confined to a wheelchair can fight — and fighting for her right to live her life free of neglect and abuse. It’s a fight that has sparked support from a small group of caring community members, and it’s a fight that seemed to draw indifference from New Mexico’s Adult Protective Services officials for several weeks.

Difficulties and losses

A lifelong Texan, McKinney has experienced a number of difficulties and losses in life that led her to moving into her rental house on Gallup’s north side, where she now lives with her service dog, Greta. Once a speech pathologist in Texas with a private speech therapy practice, McKinney was eventually forced to retire because she suffers from progressive spinocerebellar ataxia, a condition that involves the degeneration of the spinal cord and the cerebellum and the progressive loss of muscle coordination.

Because of her medical condition, McKinney has very little muscle coordination of her arms and hands, and even less coordination of her legs. She cannot get in and out of her bed or wheelchair by herself, she cannot take care of her toileting or bathing needs, she cannot dress herself, she cannot prepare herself meals, and she cannot physically defend herself. McKinney can, however, talk, read, watch television, use a computer, and make her own decisions.

McKinney’s current difficulties started when she and her mother, an Alzheimer’s patient, were forced to care for each other after her husband left her. According to McKinney, she fell into a deep depression and turned to her brother, John Leever, for help. Leever, a Gallup businessman, promised to purchase a trailer with handicapped-accessible features for McKinney and their mother to live in, she said, and he promised to install it next to his business on the west side of Gallup. As a result, McKinney moved out of the condominium her late father had purchased for her nearly 30 years before, and she let her brother move her to Gallup in December 2007. Leever declined and interview for this article.

Poor caregivers

Rather than purchasing the promised trailer, McKinney said her brother rented a small home on Gallup’s north side that was owned by the aunt and uncle of his employee, Melody Lucero, and he hired a series of caregivers. McKinney claims the women were hired through newspaper ads and none had any experience or interest in being caregivers.

Instead, she said, they turned out to be unreliable, untruthful, and unkind.

The worst caregivers, McKinney said, were the two sisters she fired on April 24 after they had abandoned her and her mother five days before. “They were hateful,” McKinney said of the women. “They didn’t hit me, but they were hateful.”

McKinney began keeping logs on the caregivers’ actions.

Sometimes McKinney would soil herself because the caregivers refused to get her out of bed in the morning, or they refused to move her from her wheelchair onto the toilet.

The caregivers insisted McKinney and her mother follow the caregivers’ schedules for eating and sleeping, McKinney added, rather than feeding the women when they were hungry or allowing them to go to bed when they were tired.

“They didn’t like doing for me,” McKinney said. The caregivers would roll their eyes when she made requests of them, she explained, and they would sometimes leave her sitting on the toilet for prolonged periods of time as punishment. As a result, McKinney said she became afraid to make requests. “I was afraid they would hurt Greta, or mother, or me,” she said.

At the same time, the caregivers were making themselves at home — at the expense of McKinney, her mother, and her brother. According to Julian Mestas, McKinney’s landlord who lives next door, he would see his niece bringing groceries into the house on Friday afternoons, and by 5 p.m. those same groceries would be going out the door — courtesy of the caregivers and their friends. In addition, the caregivers had men coming in and out of McKinney’s house at all hours, Mestas said, they had raucous arguments with some of their visitors, and they were obviously intoxicated at times. Worried about the welfare of McKinney and her mother, Mestas said he tried to talk to his niece, but she brushed off his concerns.

Disputed eviction

On April 16, McKinney asked Mestas for help. “I’m not being fed,” she told him. “I’m hungry.” Mestas then went to see Margaret Diaz, a supervisor at the North Side Senior Citizens Center, and asked if her program could start delivering lunches to McKinney and her mother. The next day, Diaz stopped by McKinney’s house to do an assessment. She found McKinney unbathed, without clean clothes, and hungry because she hadn’t been given breakfast.

McKinney’s caregiver, however, was in the bathroom, taking a shower. According to Diaz, when the woman emerged from the bathroom, she looked at Diaz and demanded, “What’s going on here?” Diaz explained her visit, and the caregiver stalked off to a back room and slammed the door.

Three days later, the two caregivers took off, leaving a disabled, wheelchair-bound woman and an Alzhiemer’s patient to fend for themselves. Five days later, they returned as if nothing had happened.

But something had happened. McKinney had had five days to think about the treatment she and her mother had been enduring. She asked Mestas to call the police for her.

“Enough was enough was enough,” McKinney said of that decision.

With Mestas’ support, McKinney decided she wanted the caregivers evicted from the property. However, according to Mestas and McKinney, Lucero showed up and demanded her uncle evict McKinney — wheelchair and all. Mestas said he went and got his deposit slips and bank statements and told Lucero that he wasn’t about to evict McKinney, the person who had actually been paying the rent each month.

“Karen don’t want them (the caregivers) here,” Mestas recalled telling Lucero. “I don’t want them here. Get them (the caregivers) out of here.”

Leever and Lucero soon removed McKinney’s mother from the home. According to McKinney, her mother is living in a south side apartment and being cared for by the same two caregivers. Court records indicate women with the caretakers’ names have faced criminal charges in New Mexico. One woman was charged with battery against a household member, which was dismissed before trial, and also interference with communications, a charge frequently related to domestic violence, which was also dismissed. The other woman pleaded guilty to DUI.

On Wednesday, in a brief telephone conversation with the Independent, Lucero denied she ever told her uncle to evict McKinney. She also declined to comment on concerns Mestas said he tried to raise with her about the caregivers’ treatment of McKinney and her mother.

Through messages left with Lucero at Leever’s business, the Independent twice tried to reach Leever for comment. “He does not wish to comment on it, and it is a personal issue,” Lucero said on behalf of her employer.

Repeated reports

With the caregivers’ abandonment of McKinney and her mother for five days, and with Lucero’s reported attempt to evict McKinney from her own home, Diaz made the first of several reports to New Mexico’s Adult Protective Services.

Specifically, Diaz was looking for state assistance to help provide McKinney with legitimate caregivers who would be concerned for McKinney’s health, safety, and welfare.

A longtime employee of the Senior Citizens Center, Diaz knew she was legally obligated to make a report. According to the state’s own Web site, “New Mexico law states that adult abuse involves knowingly, intentionally, or negligently inflicting pain, injury, or harm or depriving a vulnerable adult of essential services or supports, or improperly using an incapacitated adult’s funds or property for another’s profit.

Adult maltreatment includes physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, financial exploitation, neglect by a caregivers, or self-neglect.”

The Web site also says state law “requires that anyone having reasonable cause to believe that an incapacitated adult has been abused, neglected or exploited must immediately report that information” to Adult Protective Services. Under the law, failure to do so may constitute a misdemeanor.

Diaz said she has made four or five other reports to Adult Protective Services in the past, but never involving a major issue like the neglect and abandonment of McKinney and her mother. In those previous situations, Diaz said, Adult Protective Services employees have satisfactorily addressed the problems.

But with her reports about McKinney, Diaz found herself repeatedly talking to different state officials who seemed indifferent about McKinney’s welfare but more than willing to tell her they couldn’t and wouldn’t help.

TOMORROW: Little interest by state authorities in offering help.