Health aide stole from Hopkins care patient

A home health aide was fired and later pleaded guilty to taking money and using a credit card.

By PAUL WALSH, Star Tribune

Last update: February 9, 2010 - 7:59 PM

As a home health aide, she saw to it that the woman took her medication. She gave her baths, cooked for her and tidied up her place in the Hopkins senior housing complex.

State investigators have concluded that the aide also stole thousands of dollars from the resident at Augustana Chapel View Apartments by using the woman's checks and a credit card to pay her own bills and make purchases.

A Department of Health report issued Tuesday determined that the aide ripped off the resident by paying about $1,000 in bills with the client's checks and making four fraudulent credit cards transactions, totaling $1,435, in January 2009.

The aide, who is not named in the report, was fired less than two months later after being accused of stealing from another client at the same complex, the report said. The aide has pleaded guilty to one count of unauthorized credit-card use.

While a relative of the resident reported to a social worker that there also was an unauthorized withdrawal of $30,000 from the client's bank account, the state report's conclusion made no mention of that allegation.

In another facility owned by Augustana Care Corp., of Minneapolis, a home-care aide took OxyContin narcotic pain medicine from a resident and replaced it with Ibuprofen, investigators said.

The theft was captured on a hidden camera set up in Augustana Regent at Burnsville after the resident said she was experiencing increased pain, and once was hospitalized because of pain, but could not figure out why. The aide was fired. The home also was cited because it did not immediately report the allegation of theft.

Star Tribune staff writer Warren Wolfe contributed to this report. Paul Walsh • 612-673-4482