Dr. Arafiles Arrested

Winkler Post photo.

From the Odessa American:
KERMIT The ongoing saga of the whistle-blowing Winkler County nurses took a turn for the karmic Tuesday with the arrest of Dr. Rolando G. Arafiles on charges of retaliation and misuse of official information. Both are third-degree felonies.

(Ironically, one of these charges is the same as what the Kermit nurses were originally charged with. - DK)

Agents with the Texas Attorney General's Office presented the arrest warrant to Arafiles in Odessa and he agreed to come with them to Winkler County where 109th District Judge James Rex magistrated him, office spokesman Thomas Kelley said. Arafiles left the Winkler County Jail on a $5,000 personal recognizance bond and had his passport revoked. (Arafiles is a native of the Philippines).

Arafiles' arrest results from the criminal investigation of nurses Anne Mitchell and Vicki Galle.

They were fired from Winkler County Memorial Hospital and were indicted and arrested by local authorities in 2009 in connection with misuse of official information after they sent an anonymous letter to the Texas Medical Board with examples of 10 patients they believed Arafiles had not properly treated.

Arafiles’ criminal charges come from the Texas Attorney General’s Office. In the arrest warrant affidavit, Arafiles is accused of giving patient information to Winkler County Sheriff Robert Roberts, Arafiles’ friend and also a patient, so that Roberts could investigate the source of the anonymous accusations against him. After determining the patients themselves hadn’t made the complaints, Roberts identified Galle and Mitchell as the whistleblowers, setting into motion all future events that brought national attention to the small community.

But prosecutors dismissed the case against Galle, and Mitchell was acquitted by jury in February. In August, the pair received $750,000 after Winkler County settled a federal civil suit against many of the officials involved.

The affidavit said Arafiles disclosed the information to Roberts to stop what he characterized as harassment against him, but that wouldn’t be considered a proper governmental purpose, especially against certified nurses with a duty to report harmful medical practices. The affidavit also said Arafiles’ inquiries should have been directed to the Texas Medical Board, not a local law-enforcement officer.

Hospital Board member John Walton said he thought the whole matter was through when the civil suit was settled, but the hospital continues to struggle after the resignation of administrator Stan Wiley in October and continues to need another doctor after one that came in left to work in Odessa.

“What it’s done is made people not trust the hospital,” Walton said.

(No kidding! - DK)



CLICK HERE to see CBS7's story on the arrest.  (He runs from the camera. - DK)

CLICK HERE to read the arrest affidavit.

CLICK HERE to read the Texas Medical Board's civil complaint against Arafiles.

(Repost) To Touch an Angel by Paul Crume

Merry Christmas everybody! I posted Paul Crume's 1967 masterpiece three years ago and illustrated it with some rather spooky angel images. This year I thought I would repost it, with pictures we took at Odessa's Starbright Village. This may be a hare-brained idea, but you be the judge.

 You can see the Dallas Morning News animated version here and read more about the author here.
View the Starbright Village tree-lighting ceremony here.


Liz and Robert.

"A man wrote me not long ago and asked me what I thought of the theory of angels. I immediately told him that I am highly in favor of angels. As a matter of fact, I am scared to death of them.

Any adult human being with half sense, and some with more, knows that there are angels.

If he has ever spent any period in loneliness, when the senses are forced in upon themselves, he has felt the wind from their beating wings and been overwhelmed with the sudden realization of the endless and gigantic dark that exists outside the little candle flame of human knowledge.

 

He has prayed, not in the sense that he asked for something, but that he yielded himself.

Angels live daily at our very elbows, and so do demons, and most men at one time or another in their lives have yielded themselves to both and have lived to rejoice and rue their impulses. 

 

But the man who has once felt the beat of an angel's wing finds it easy to rejoice at the universe and at his fellow man.

It does not happen to any man often, and too many of us dismiss it when it happens.

I remember a time in my final days in college when the chinaberry trees were abloom and the air was sweet with spring blossoms and I stood still on the street, suddenly struck with the feeling of something that was an enormous promise and yet was no tangible promise at all.

And there was another night in a small boat when the moon was full and the distant headlands were dark but beautiful and we were lonely.

The pull of a nameless emotion was so strong that it filled the atmosphere. The small boy within me cried.

Psychiatrists will say that the angel in all this was really within me, not outside, but it makes no difference.

There are angels inside us and angels outside, and the one inside is usually the quickest choked.

Francis Thompson said it better. He was a late 19th-century English poet who would put the current crop of hippies to shame.

He was on pot all his life. His pad was always mean and was sometimes a park bench.

He was a mental case and tubercular besides.

He carried a fishing creel into which he dropped the poetry that was later to become immortal.

"The angels keep their ancient places," wrote Francis Thompson in protest. "Turn but a stone, and start a wing."

He was lonely enough to be the constant associate of angels.

There is an angel close to you this day. Merry Christmas, and I wish you well."

Fallen Officers' Memorial.

Robert.

egalliV thgirbratS.

More about Starbright Village

Christmas in Liz's Room!

 Two recurring themes this year:  Snowmen and Snoopy.

This banner has little blue twinkling lights.  Very festive.

 We still have the quasi-legal pinecone.

 Most of the Snoopy items make music.  This one drums to the "Linus and Lucy" tune.

I had never seen a Charlie Brown Nativity before.  We found it at Mardel.



The Breen Machine and Other Links

We saw this man and his vehicle passing through Notrees on his way to Kermit.  We were headed east and he was heading west.  He's on a 30,000-mile trek in his CyclOcar, trying to set a world's record.  Read his blog post about his Notrees/Kermit adventure.  He even stopped at the Huddle House.

• Also, Kermit is one of the safest cities in the U.S. according to Buzzle.com, who have never lied to me before because I've never heard of them.  (Scroll down after jump.)
• The military's secret plot to hire or recruit bloggers!
• The Church of Ireland's official blog mentions the KISD choir and their (then-upcoming) visit.

Golf Etiquette

Maybe He Overspent ...

... on that Hawaiian trip!

Lunchtime Surprise!

H/T Gazelle.