Chiro Richey released a YouTube video last year pleading for help with guardianship
by Matt Flener
FARMINGTON, Mo. — Inside a wing of a nursing home in Farmington, Missouri, Chiro Richey has answered the facility’s phone multiple times over the past six months. She cannot leave without permission from her court-appointed guardian.
"This is nothing like prison," she said in one of her phone conversations with KMBC 9 Investigates. "This is way worse than prison."
Richey is not under a criminal sentence.
She lives in the Farmington care facility as part of her public guardian’s care plan for her life.
"We go outside to smoke break, and that's about it," she said.
Buchanan County Public Administrator Brad Haggard, Richey’s guardian, told KMBC he could not speak about Richey’s case due to privacy concerns. But Haggard invited KMBC to learn more about the work he and five other staff members inside his office do every day.
Haggard, court records indicate, has also agreed for Richey to seek an independent psychological evaluation that could determine if she could be released from public guardianship.
Missouri public administrators like Haggard are mostly elected, sometimes appointed, to serve as court-approved public guardians when people cannot care for themselves or lack family support.
The phone rings an average of 70 times a day in his office. More than half of the callers are wards under his care with questions. Others are medical providers, attorneys or people seeking his consent for something. To keep up, he just got approval from the county commission for two more staff members in his office.
As a former nursing home administrator and state-level leader for the Missouri Veterans Commission Homes program, Haggard said it catches his attention when he hears one of his clients feels like they are in prison.
"Because we certainly don't want that," he said. "We don't want anyone to feel like that."
Paper Prisons: Public guardianship in Missouri under investigation
Chiro Richey is one of more than an estimated 11,000 people in Missouri under public guardianship.
Richey spoke to KMBC 9 News for an ongoing investigation called "Paper Prisons," highlighting the difficulties of wards of the state and their families under Missouri’s system of public guardianship.
KMBC is investigating ways to systemically improve the care of those under guardianship by telling stories of people struggling to navigate a tangled system of legal paperwork, medical records and court orders. KMBC is also seeking answers, perspective and context from those in charge of keeping wards of the state in their care for their recommendations on how to improve the system.
"I’m locked up and trapped in a system that is not fair," Richey said on the phone with KMBC.
In 2016, Richey became a ward of the state of Missouri. She had a drug problem, she said.
"I asked the judge to take my rights away, so that I could get clean," she said in a YouTube video released last year. "Well, after I got clean, they would not let me go."
Every year since 2017, a judge has reviewed a year-end status report from her public guardian about her living conditions and her finances. Richey appeared before Buchanan County Judge David Bolander in September of last year. She thanked him for reviewing her case.
Bolander ordered an independent psychological evaluation for Richey to help him review her request for restoration. But the evaluation has faced multiple delays since then.
Bolander, in court paperwork, has indicated the evaluation will now take place in early March, and he will review Richey’s case again on March 25.
Richey said she has taken classes, seen doctors, written letters to the court, but remains under the state’s care.
"It puts you in a place of loneliness," she said.
Public administrators face challenges with clients across the state
Brad Haggard must travel five and a half hours across the state if he wants to visit Richey.
Haggard has become a road warrior since taking office in January of 2025.
He has 297 clients. About half of the people in that caseload are in 34 different nursing homes across the state. A Missouri map hangs in his office with push pins for every Missouri town with a client, reaching all the way down to Missouri’s southwest bootheel. Buchanan County is in the northwest corner of the state.
Proximity is a common challenge for Missouri guardians and their wards.
People like Richey are spread out in facilities, group homes or other living arrangements across the state’s 114 counties and the city of St. Louis due to few resources close to home.
"We'd be able to be more engaged with people if our clients were close to us," Haggard said.
Often, the safest and quickest option for food, medical care and shelter for public guardians is Missouri’s 486 skilled nursing facilities.
However, in 2024, the United States Department of Justice found that Missouri "unnecessarily institutionalizes" too many people with mental health disabilities in skilled nursing homes, improperly relying on guardianship. The report said Missouri used "guardianship as a pipeline" to nursing homes across the state.
A 2020 report from the Missouri Association of Public Administrators mentioned several opportunities for improvement, saying a "lack of state funding and coordination leaves Missouri with a fragmented public guardianship system."
The report highlighted how public administrators often do not have enough resources, "while navigating complex systems to provide care for their wards — while also facing increased pressure from the state and stakeholders to ensure all wards are placed in their least-restrictive alternatives."
Haggard said it is always his goal to get people to the least restrictive setting or placement. Proximity is important in that conversation, he said. Haggard would tell lawmakers that Missouri needs more available housing placement and community resources for wards.
"Particularly closer to you," he said. "So, you could be more involved in them," he said.
Still, Haggard said he and his staff work nonstop trying to communicate with his clients or caregivers every day.
Chiro Richey’s next steps
Meanwhile, Chiro Richey waits for her next steps.
She wants to move back to St. Joseph, find a job and reconnect with family.
Until then, she remains in the skilled nursing facility in Farmington.
Richey wanted her story to be public so it might help her and others get out of guardianship.
"Just get the word out," she said. "There's people like us that are stuck in these places that need to be released."
If you know of someone going through struggles with Missouri’s public guardianship system, or if you have a case to highlight that exposes solutions for Missouri’s public guardianship system that could teach lessons to others, please email investigates@kmbc.com.
Full Article & Source:
Paper Prisons: Missouri woman seeking release from public guardianship
See Also:
Judge: Missouri public guardian’s felony financial crime case can move forward
Missouri public guardian pleads not guilty to eight felony counts
Missouri elected guardian charged with 8 felonies for stealing from ward
Paper Prisons: Missouri woman details struggle to leave public guardianship after husband's death
Paper Prisons: Missouri man continues fight to free his mother from public guardianship
Sullivan County elected official accused of stealing thousands from disabled person
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