Ambulance rushed a Fresno woman to the hospital. When she awoke, her jewelry was gone | Opinion
Barbara Moore Cota can’t let this go. Not this. The solid gold cuff bracelet that belonged to her late father, the one she hardly ever took off her left wrist, carries too much meaning.
“I know this sounds silly,” Moore Cota said, “but at times in my life I’d touch it and feel like he’s right there with me.”
The heirloom cuff bracelet is now missing, along with two other pieces of jewelry (a gold chain bracelet and a gold necklace with a heart-shaped diamond pendant) the 67-year-old had on when she collapsed March 24 inside her north Fresno home.
Richard Hartman, after finding his fiancee unconscious on the floor of the second-story master bathroom, called 9-1-1. Paramedics employed by American Ambulance soon arrived at the house to transport Moore Cota to Community Regional Medical Center in downtown Fresno.
One of the paramedics, Hartman said, asked him to provide the prescription medications Moore Cota was taking for a variety of ailments including fibromyalgia, an irregular heartbeat and respiratory distress. So Hartman handed over a gallon-sized Ziploc bag containing several prescription meds, including a full bottle of the opioid painkiller hydrocodone-acetaminophen.
During her eight-day hospital stay, including two in intensive care, Moore Cota discovered that her medications were missing. The hospital had no record of any bag being checked in through security when the paramedics delivered her to the hospital.
Only then did it dawn on Moore Cota that the three jewelry pieces she swears she was wearing when she collapsed were missing as well. Most significantly, her dad’s gold cuff bracelet.
“When my dad passed, my mom took it off his wrist and placed it around mine,” the Fresno native said about her father, George Moore, who died in 1980. “I rarely ever take it off. I planned to give it to my oldest granddaughter.”
Ambulance company, hospital pass blame
Moore Cota and Hartman have made numerous inquiries with American Ambulance and Community Medical Centers concerning the missing items. Through in-person conversations and more than a dozen phone calls with company officials and hospital staff, they’ve gathered several clues and inconsistencies, but no hard evidence.
For example, the couple says an American Ambulance supervisor told them one of the paramedics who treated her reported checking in the Ziploc bag of meds at the hospital wrapped inside a bundle of clothes. The problem with that story is Moore Cota didn’t have any extra clothes — only the black tank top and leggings she was wearing.
Another story they heard is that one of the paramedics told a supervisor that he handed the bag of meds back to Hartman.
“That’s absolutely false, I swear to God,” Hartman said.
American Ambulance and Community Medical Centers, it seemed, were eager to play the blame game.
“American Ambulance blames everything on Community Hospital and Community Hospital blames everything on American Ambulance,” Hartman said. “A patient is stuck between a rock and a hard place.”
Internal investigations & a strange text
There’s one more interesting piece to this puzzle: Moore Cota said there is a witness, a neighbor, who saw her being loaded into the ambulance with bare arms folded across her chest and no bracelets around either wrist.
To Moore Cota, this strongly implies one of the paramedics removed the jewelry before she was carried downstairs and outside strapped to a backboard.
Per the couple’s request, Community Medical Centers conducted an internal investigation. On April 25, Moore Cota received a letter from the hospital’s patient relations/lost property department informing her that the jewelry and bag of meds “have not been located within our facility.”
So too did American Ambulance, Fresno County’s exclusive 9-1-1 emergency services provider.
“We’ve done a full investigation — I just can’t discuss that,” said Mike Estrada, the company’s countywide operations manager. “But I’ve been working with Barbara to help figure this out.”
Last week, an unusual event prompted Moore Cota to file a police report. Shortly after posting a Facebook message about what happened, she received an anonymous text message offering their return for $800.
The anonymous texter (with a Texas area code) then claimed to be the brother-in-law of a Fresno paramedic.
However, a Fresno Police Department sergeant to whom Moore Cota spoke at the northeast substation advised her she was being scammed by someone who saw the post and used the internet to mine her cell number. Police gave her a case number and conducted a follow-up interview where she gave police all the details regarding the disappearance of her jewelry.
‘They picked on the wrong person’
Moore Cota, a former Fresno County probation officer, understands it’s unlikely the missing jewelry will ever be recovered. (Her dad’s bracelet is the only piece she truly cares about getting back.) However, she can’t let this go or be silent.
“They picked on the wrong person this time,” said Moore Cota, who receives oxygen from a breathing tube she totes around the house. Her left arm is also in a sling as a result of a fractured thumb.
“And if they did this to me, how many other people have they done this to? It just breaks my heart.”
I did a little checking of the Fresno County Superior Court records and could not find any similar judgments or complaints against American Ambulance. It should also be pointed out that background checks are required for certified paramedics.
Moore Cota is grateful for the emergency medical services she received, saying she probably wouldn’t be alive without it. Both her pulse and blood pressure were dangerously low when the paramedics arrived. But that doesn’t salve the anger and shame she feels over losing a family heirloom she believes was removed from her unconscious body.
“I feel like I’m going to die,” she said, “like my heart is going to stop beating.”
This story was originally published May 5, 2023 at 5:30 AM.
