Urine found in ice at senior-living center: Owner suspects disgruntled workers

The soda tasted like urine, so she poured a new can into a different ice-filled glass.

After another sip, Kathleen Chmura realized it wasn't the soda that was tainted — it was the ice, taken from a bin at the By the Lake senior assisted living center she owns in Hayden, Idaho.

Chmura suspects the urine-soaked ice bin was the final move by an employee who'd joined two other employees in a September walkout to protest the firing of two employees three days earlier.

Before walking out, the three employees woke up the residents and told them the facility was closing and everyone had been fired, according to a Kootenai County Sheriff's Department report.

Chmura discovered the bin later that day.

She told the story to a Kootenai County deputy Wednesday while reporting suspected theft and fraud by the former employees.

"I won't put up with this crap," Chmura said in an interview Thursday.

Chmura fired two employees Sept. 23 because she suspected they'd been stealing money and prescription drugs from the center, according to the report by Deputy J. D. Brandel.

Credit card bills and drug disposal logs Chmura examined after the two left showed missing OxyContin and hydrocodone pills and more than $10,000 in credit card purchases of personal items such as groceries at Costco and gift cards to Wal-Mart, Chili's and movie theaters, according to the report.

No arrests have been made, and Brandel noted in his report that he hadn't begun an investigation. Chmura told Brandel she'd make a list of residents who could have been served the urine-soaked ice and compile a list of fraudulent purchases.

Chmura emphasized Thursday that the incidents were a case of a couple of bad employees acting out.

"We run the best, the cleanest facility in Kootenai County," she said. "There isn't any abuse here."

Mary Lesak, an independent nursing contractor who works with By the Lake, called the center "top-notch."

"They set the example," she said. "They're in it for all the right reasons."

Chmura was part of a group advocating for stronger laws against elder abuse in connection with abuse and theft at the Fairwinds Retirement Community in Coeur d'Alene.

The former manager of Fairwinds served six months in prison for stealing from two patients. The case prompted the 2005 state Legislature to make abusing vulnerable adults a felony rather than a misdemeanor.

Chmura opened By the Lake — on Honeysuckle Avenue near Hayden Lake — in January 2007

"We've worked so hard not to be like the rest of them," she said. "I don't mess around with this kind of stuff."