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| A photograph taken in the home of a Waldport woman for whom Patricia
Norenberg acted as caregiver shows a soiled wheelchair and mattress.
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By: Kenneth Lipp
WALDPORT — A state-provided caregiver has been charged with
multiple felony counts of theft, fraud and mistreatment of a disabled
senior under her care.
According to an affidavit of probable cause filed in Lincoln
County Circuit Court, when the defendant’s client arrived by ambulance
at the hospital in Newport after calling 911 Aug. 25, “she had visible
wounds to the tendons and bones in her legs, and had live maggots in the
wounds.” The emergency room physician told her that her leg might have
to be amputated. She was transferred to Good Samaritan Regional Medical
Center in Corvallis, where surgeons were able to save her limb.
Her caregiver, Patricia Dianne Norenberg, 54, of Waldport, was
not there when her elder charge called 911, and the victim later told
investigators she’d been alone in the house for several days prior to
hospitalization. She said she’d lain in bed for several days, soiling
herself, before calling 911 in extreme pain. The 77-year-old woman
requires regular attention, including wound care, for multiple medical
conditions.
While she was hospitalized, her son and daughter-in-law
accessed her bank account to make some transactions on her behalf, and
they noticed something other than the victim’s physical condition was
amiss.
“There’s no way Mom has ever spent $300 at Walmart. She’s very
thrifty. It would never happen,” daughter-in-law Jessica Lindley, a
forensic psychologist in Portland, told the News-Times. “But it was the
food that initially stuck out. We’d been driving from Portland to
Waldport to bring her food. There’s no way she was spending $1,500 a
month at Ray’s Food Market,” she said.
They asked the bank for a fraud investigation and ended up
disputing $4,780 in transactions made between June 27 and Aug. 21. There
was also security footage, later shared with investigators, allegedly
showing Norenberg using the victim’s debit card to withdraw $400 from a
Waldport ATM on Sept. 5, when her client was in the hospital in
Corvallis.
Lindley contacted the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office Sept. 10
and reported that her mother-in-law was the victim of elder abuse. She
also shared with investigators photographs and a video walkthrough of
her mother-in-law’s home she’d taken after her hospitalization. The
images revealed a “dirty and disorganized house,” with “carpets full of
stains and debris,” as well as a soiled wheelchair and mattress that
were “discolored due to bodily fluids,” according to the probable cause
affidavit.
Investigators brought Norenberg in for an interview on Nov. 19,
during which, according to the affidavit, she admitted that she’d never
bathed nor dressed her client during the time she was her caregiver,
though those tasks were among her assigned duties. She also told
investigators that she’d noticed the “filthy condition” of the
wheelchair when she first assumed the caregiver role in May, and said
she’d never cleaned it. “Norenberg told me the wheelchair was stained
with bodily fluids because (her client) would often urinate or have
bowel movements in the chair,” an investigator wrote in the affidavit.
She initially denied using the victim’s debit card to make
purchases, saying that she’d been given the card to do some shopping for
her client at Ray’s, but “she tried not to memorize the PIN.” After
being shown security footage of the ATM withdrawal, she admitted to that
and other transactions, including a nearly $300 payment on her personal
health care account and $40 for her cellphone bill.
She told investigators she intended to repay those
expenditures, and she said many of the disputed transactions — including
purchases of software, copy paper, charcoal, phone activations and a
lace kimono — were in fact made for her client, as were multiple
point-of-sale cash back transactions. The victim told investigators she
did not know how to use a computer, nor was she aware that cash back at
the grocery store was a possibility.
According to the affidavit, Norenberg told investigators she
did not come to work the day prior to her client’s hospitalization — she
said she’d spoken with her by phone, and her client said she wasn’t
feeling well and did not want to attend her scheduled wound care
appointment in Newport.
At the conclusion of the interview, Norenberg was arrested and
charged with three Class B felony counts of aggravated identity theft —
for alleged fraudulent use of another person’s PIN 10 or more times
within 180 days — as well as Class C felony charges of theft, fraudulent
use of a credit card and three counts each of non-aggravated identity
theft and first-degree criminal mistreatment. She was also charged with
misdemeanor counts of criminal mistreatment and recklessly endangering
another person.
In giving grounds for the felony mistreatment charges, an
investigator wrote that in addition to wrongfully appropriating money
from a dependent person in her care, Norenberg had also recommended to
her employer that her client be placed in hospice if she survived her
hospitalization and offered to continue as her caretaker, thereby
“taking charge of a dependent or elderly person for the purpose of
fraud.”
Norenberg is next scheduled to appear in court before Judge
Thomas Branford on Jan. 19. She remains in custody in the Lincoln County
Jail on $100,000 bond. Judge Amanda Benjamin made “no employment as a
care provider” a condition of her bail, should she secure conditional
release. She has not yet entered a plea.
Lindley said her mother-in-law has been discharged from the
hospital to a skilled nursing facility in Corvallis. “She’s doing much
better with her wounds. The wound that had the maggots in it is still
healing, but the other leg is completely healed,” she said. There’s
currently a large COVID-19 outbreak at the facility, and her
mother-in-law has tested positive for the virus.
Lindley enthusiastically credited Lincoln County Sheriff’s
Office Deputy Doug Honse, the chief investigator, for his commitment to
the case.
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