Surgical Tech Stole Drugs, Exposed Patients to Hepatitis C
Kristen Diane Parker is 26, has a 2-year-old son, loves mixed-martial arts fighting, and was proud of her work in the medical field as a surgical tech. She has also been arrested for stealing syringes filled with powerful narcotics meant for patients and refilling the used syringes with saline solution. She’s also positive for hepatitis C.
Parker admitted to using heroin for three months last year when she lived in New Jersey; it was there that she believes was infected with hepatitis C. Her arrest shocked thousands of former patients who may have been exposed to the potentially deadly disease. About 5,700 people now need to be tested and 10 are confirmed to have contracted the disease after surgery at Rose Medical Center in Denver, Colorado.
Authorities say Parker returned her dirty syringes filled with saline, which were then used on surgical patients. She took a blood test when she started working at Rose in October that indicated she might have hepatitis C. Rose informed her of the results, recommended that she see a doctor, and referred her to a free clinic because she was uninsured. But she never went for further tests.
“It didn’t cross my mind at all,” she said when asked by investigators whether she considered the risk of transmitting hepatitis C to patients when she returned used needles. She said she didn’t see a doctor because she was focused on starting her new job and there was no indication she was sick.
Hepatitis C can lead to lifelong problems and occasionally to cirrhosis and liver cancer. Health officials are scrambling to identify people who may have been affected at both Rose and Audubon Surgery Center in Colorado Springs, where Parker also worked.
A Houston native, Parker earned a certificate of technical surgery from San Jacinto College in her hometown in 2004 and worked at a hospital in Texas before moving to New York in 2006. She later lived in New Jersey and moved to Colorado in September 2008. She was hired by Rose Medical Center in October 2008 and was fired in April after she was caught in an operating room where she wasn’t assigned and subsequently tested positive for the drug fentanyl.
Parker admitted stealing fentanyl between 15 and 20 times beginning in January. “I can’t take back what I did, but I will have to live with it for the rest of my life, and so does everyone else,” she said.
Parker said her addiction to painkillers began after she had reconstructive jaw surgery. She told investigators she shot heroin with shared needles from July to September 2008 when she lived in New Jersey, and friends say she used the drug before that. She moved in with her parents when she moved to Colorado.
She said an argument with her son’s father regarding custody drove her back to drugs, and that fentanyl helped relieve her back pain on long shifts. She kept a saline-filled syringe in her pocket at work, and would steal the fentanyl and shoot up in a bathroom when the opportunity arose.
“I’d have it drawn up and ready to go,” she said. If she saw the drugs on a table in an unattended operating room, she would switch them.
Nathan Heath, a North Carolina tattoo artist who dated Parker several years ago, said he wasn’t surprised by the allegations and that she was addicted to heroin when they were dating.
“She does have addiction problems,” he said. "I know she was on a methadone program for a while, and it was doing her really well. Like I said, she's a really big-hearted person. She'll go out of her way for people. Even when we broke up, we still remained friends. There was no hatred there. She is a good person; she just has that disease of addiction."