Sonoma Developmental Center

State health inspectors are accusing a state-run home for retarded adults of violations that include the overdose death of a 33-year-old man, the mysterious poisoning of a 40-year-old woman and the staff's use of a stun gun on a young man. The state Department of Health Services has issued at least 15 citations, carrying penalties totaling $142,800, since January against the Sonoma Developmental Center in the Northern California town of Glen Ellen.

State health inspectors are accusing a state-run home for retarded adults of violations that include the overdose death of a 33-year-old man, the mysterious poisoning of a 40-year-old woman and the staff's use of a stun gun on a young man. The state Department of Health Services has issued at least 15 citations, carrying penalties totaling $142,800, since January against the Sonoma Developmental Center in the Northern California town of Glen Ellen.

For the first time in the state, inmates at San Quentin prison have begun mass-producing custom wheelchair parts for the disabled, a spokesman said. "It's an opportunity for me to give something back-- it makes me feel great," said Rocky Laboa, 29, a convicted murderer from Hanford who has been behind bars for eight years.

Gov. Pete Wilson's recent decision to close Camarillo State Hospital saddened me. I hope the Legislature will seriously look at the options for use developed by Sen. Cathie Wright and Assemblyman Nao Takasugi in deciding what is best for Ventura County. The proposal to convert the site to a university housing a few developmentally disabled, made recently by Sen. Jack O'Connell and Assemblyman George Firestone, is short-sighted and not feasible. It is naive to think that a university can open immediately if the mentally ill leave the facility.

The state auditor Tuesday identified more than 100 nurses and psychiatric workers on the state payroll who have at least doubled their salaries with overtime, working as many as 90 hours a week. One nurse at Napa State Hospital made $733,000 in overtime in the last five years -- 66% of his total earnings -- by logging 51 extra hours each week during that period, according to the report by State Auditor Elaine Howle. She called for caps on overtime and other changes to prevent abuses and problems.

A team of investigators from the state auditor general's office is combing through records and talking to patients this week at Camarillo State Hospital to determine if mentally retarded children there have abused each other, as they reportedly did at a state hospital in Sonoma. Hospital officials say the probe is part of a statewide investigation and are confident that Camarillo has no similar problems.

Myra Taylor touches the plastic box fastened to her wheelchair. "How are you?" she asks. "I feel happy today." In the wheelchair next to her, Michael Darlack leans over his box and announces, "I hate to wait." The messages are different, but the electronically synthesized voice that says them is not. It is, in fact, produced by the SonomaVoice, a portable box that talks in sentences at the touch of a button.

Reacting to concerns that Gov. Pete Wilson could close Camarillo State Hospital, state officials said Thursday they are looking for ways to save money, but have no plans to close any state psychiatric hospital. Hospital officials and members of the Ventura County Alliance for the Mentally Ill said this week they fear that Camarillo State Hospital might close, forcing the dismissal or transfer of its 1,800 workers.

Four years after voters approved bonds to strengthen government buildings, the Wilson Administration on Friday identified the 20 most seismically unsafe state buildings in California, including three in Downtown Los Angeles that it singled out for demolition.

The Fairview Developmental Center plans to move roughly 400 of its retarded clients out of a hospital setting and into community housing as the result of a legal battle in Northern California that pitted advocates for the mentally retarded against some families who wanted their relatives to remain in institutions like Fairview.

When thousands of dollars belonging to elderly residents of a veterans home went missing, police set out to catch the thief. A video camera they hid showed nurse's aide Linda Riccitelli creeping into a 93-year-old man's room and sticking her hand in a dresser drawer stashed with bait money. Investigators confirmed the cash was gone and the video showed that no one else had opened the drawer. Prosecutors charged Riccitelli with burglary, and the Department of Veterans Affairs fired her. To most, it seemed like an open-and-shut case.