Dr. Lisa Brenner, one the nation’s leading clinical research psychologists in suicidology, went over to a Black employee and grabbed a handful of the woman’s long “Poetic Justice”-style braids.

“If I were you,” Brenner said according to the employee, yanking slightly on her hair, “I’d rather be bald like one of those warrior women in ‘Black Panther.'”

The employee didn’t know what to say.

“You feel completely invisible,” the woman said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because she still works for the VA. “How do you respond when someone in a position of power says something like this?”

Department staff say the incident represents just one of many troubling encounters with Brenner. The union of Aurora VA workers in March compiled a report from 28 staffers, outlining the “emotional, mental and psychological abuse exhibited by Brenner” over the years.

The center — known as the MIRECC — provides research, education and treatment aimed at suicide prevention among veterans. But the union’s report, along with interviews with more than half a dozen current and former employees, paint the picture of a workforce that struggles mightily with their own mental health under a fearsome boss known for retaliation, intimidation and, they say, unequal treatment of people of color.

“The work culture there is very toxic,” said Dr. Brooke Dorsey Holliman, a former employee. “People are scared to speak up.”

The union asked the VA’s executive leadership to conduct a third-party investigation into Brenner. That hasn’t happened, according to the union.

But a day after The Denver Post sent the VA questions about Brenner’s tenure, leadership said it would investigate the union’s concerns. The same day, employees learned Brenner has been detailed to the VA’s national office for suicide prevention on a temporary assignment.

Brenner, through a VA spokesperson, declined an interview request for this story. Her attorney, in a statement, said Brenner would “cooperate fully in any investigation and hope the MIRECC’s work will benefit from the process.”

The VA also declined to answer a list of detailed questions from The Post.

Kayla Giuliano, an agency spokesperson, said in an email that the VA “is committed to ensuring a safe, welcoming, and harassment-free environment for all employees.”

The allegations inside the MIRECC come amid a turbulent time for the VA’s Eastern Colorado Health Care System, which provides services to 100,000 veterans across the Front Range and Eastern Plains.

VA leaders recently reassigned the system’s director, Michael Kilmer, and his chief of staff over concerns about “operational oversight, organizational health and workplace culture.” The agency refused to specify the exact concerns that led to the changes.

More than a dozen current and former doctors, nurses and administrators outlined to The Post last month a hostile work climate that closely mirrors the stories from Brenner’s employees — an environment where fear and retaliation run rampant.

The Post also found the VA’s prosthetics department chief was instructing employees to delete orders in order to eliminate a backlog.

The “Brenner tornado”

The mission of the MIRECC is to study suicide “with the goal of reducing suicidal ideation and behaviors in veteran population,” according to its website.

Staff work on clinical interventions — along with “cognitive and neurobiological underpinnings of suicidal thoughts and behaviors” — that could lead to promising prevention strategies. The center also provides educational materials and makes research being done across the country accessible.

Brenner has served as the center’s director since 2010, according to her LinkedIn profile, and is a professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

She is considered a leading expert in the field of suicidology, particularly the relationship between traumatic brain injury and negative mental health outcomes. She’s published extensively over her career and has earned several industry awards and recognitions.

“With that kind of recognition there is a lot of power,” said Dr. Samantha Farro, a psychologist who worked for Brenner.

Former employees say Brenner fostered a competitive, demanding work environment at the MIRECC. Staff would be pitted against one another.

“She demanded a high level of excellence,” Farro said. “It got very intense — definitely a level of intensity I have not seen in any of the places I’ve worked.”

Brenner held weekly all-staff meetings, where she stood in the front of the room and called on employees to report the amount of money they brought in or articles that had been accepted for publication. She publicly shamed those who hadn’t hit these goals, said Dr. Cynthia Grant, a former employee.

“People would leave this meeting in tears,” Grant said. “It was horrible. You could cut the tension with a knife in these meetings.”

Staff said Brenner’s leadership resembled a dictatorship. They even have a term — the “Brenner tornado” — for when the boss begins to get irritated.

“Emotional, mental, and psychological abuse”

On March 28, the American Federation of Government Employees Local 2241 — the union representing MIRECC employees — sent a seven-page memo to the VA’s executive leadership.

The report, compiled from over 28 respondents, outlines “several concerning themes and similarities which have been revealed to the union regarding Dr. Brenner and her leadership in MIRECC.”

Fifteen staffers said they do not feel safe “due to the emotional, mental, and psychological abuse exhibited” by Brenner. Eleven people said she creates a toxic environment and culture. Fourteen said she instills a culture of fear in employees and “threatens employment to control them.” Eight said Brenner is manipulative. Twenty-one said they have been embarrassed, humiliated or called out in front of others. Six called her “narcissistic.”

Others told the union that Brenner retaliates against employees by removing them from assigned projects, withholding step increases and earned bonuses and denying promotions.

“Dr. Brenner is well known in the community,” the memo states. “Constant fear by staff that she will ruin your career if you upset her or if she feels she has been betrayed by you.”

Nine people told the union that Brenner, despite working in suicide prevention, discourages mental health treatment for employees. She views mental health “as not important and as being weak and vulnerable for staff to engage in,” the memo states.

“You didn’t feel that was supported,” Holliman, a former employee, said. “It would have been laughed at.”

The union’s report also alleges Brenner mixes personal travel and business. The director allegedly used a government vehicle on trips to visit family and has been known to upgrade flights to first class, the union said. Brenner was also accused of misusing funds on trips to cover non-work expenses.

Staff had valid concerns about the risk to their careers if the issues persist, the memo states.

The union requested the VA’s executive leadership initiate a formal third-party, impartial investigation. The memo made its way to Kilmer, the VA’s Eastern Colorado director, who was reassigned in October amid oversight investigations. The memo also went to the VA’s regional Rocky Mountain Network, which oversees several health care systems across the West.

In June, a union steward sent an email to members, saying the executive leadership was unable to move forward with an investigation due to the anonymous nature of the allegations. As a result, the union filed an anonymous complaint with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal investigative and prosecutorial agency.

An attorney with the federal agency told the union that month that they did not believe they could prove the MIRECC’s actions constituted a prohibited personnel practice.

Giuliano, the VA spokesperson, told The Post this week that leadership is now investigating the union’s concerns.

“Whenever there are allegations of wrongdoing, we investigate thoroughly and take appropriate action,” she said in a statement.

On Tuesday, a day after The Post sent a list of detailed questions to the VA about Brenner’s alleged behavior, Eastern Colorado’s interim chief of staff, Mark Kadowaki, sent an email to MIRECC staff announcing major changes to the center.

Brenner, he said, would be moving to a temporary assignment as deputy director for the VA’s national suicide prevention program to support the suicide prevention annual report. There she will continue her research and will be available to the Rocky Mountain MIRECC as an adviser for local suicide prevention efforts, Kadowaki said in the email, which was reviewed by The Post.

Dr. Nazanin Bahraini, the center’s director of research, will become acting director. She told staff in an email Tuesday afternoon that she realized “that this is an unexpected shift and many of you may have a lot of questions.”

“I will do my best to fill her shoes while she is on detail,” Bahraini wrote in the email, which was reviewed by The Post.

Brenner’s attorney, David Schleicher, told The Post in an email that Brenner “looks forward to the opportunity to address the union’s concerns, and agrees about the importance of supporting workplace diversity and the value of providing safe space for raising staff concerns.”

“It was not unexpected that higher management would detail her to allow for an investigation,” Schleicher said.

A recent anonymous 360-degree performance evaluation by colleagues at various job levels shows Brenner scored “above expectations” on a variety of categories, including team building, leveraging diversity and accountability.

“It was horrifying”

The union’s memo doesn’t discuss racism. But multiple former Black employees told The Post they felt like they were treated differently from their straight, white counterparts.

The worker who had her braids pulled by Brenner said another high-ranking MIRECC leader, Dr. Lisa Betthauser, told her in 2017 that she had a bad attitude. In front of several other employees, Betthauser demanded the staffer give up her phone so she could call the woman’s mother to fix her behavior, the employee said.

This woman, upset, told Brenner what had happened.

Brenner, according to this person, said she had “resting bitch face” which may have contributed to Betthauser’s comments (a VA spokesperson did not answer questions about this incident).

“It was horrifying,” the individual said. “Every interaction with Lisa Brenner — she just knows how to make you feel like the smallest person in the room and then step on you even more.”

Holliman, another Black employee, said people in the office would call her and others the “Black girls.” She received her doctorate while working at the MIRECC, but always felt the message from leadership was that she wasn’t good enough.

“I started questioning myself,” Holliman said. “It made it really hard to do my job. You start to think, ‘Maybe she’s right — maybe I’m not cut out for this.'”

White colleagues acknowledged to The Post that they didn’t think the women of color were as supported as others in their ambitions.

Holliman and another former worker remember Brenner complaining that “everything would be so much easier if we could only hire straight white men.”

The implication, Holliman said, was that “diversity creates so many issues.”

After George Floyd’s murder in 2020, the department held a diversity, equity and inclusion listening session. An employee talked about growing up in poverty on an Indian reservation and the racism he still sees directed toward Native Americans.

Brenner interrupted, according to people in the room, making clear that this wasn’t what they were here to discuss.

Other employees recall bizarre, inappropriate behavior from Brenner.

Grant remembers meeting with Brenner with the door closed. Brenner realized that her dress shirt was on backward and proceeded to take it off in front of her subordinate and turn it the right way, Grant said.

“She definitely struggled with boundary violations,” Grant said.

The VA did not answer questions about any of these incidents.

Employees talked about the Stockholm Syndrome they felt working for the MIRECC. It was only once they moved on to other jobs did they fully realize the extent to which they had suffered in the Aurora VA.

Grant took a $50,000 pay cut to leave, she said. Farro said while she respected Brenner as a researcher, she had “no desire to work with her again.” Holliman said her professional life has thrived since she left the VA.

“It was a traumatic experience to work there,” she said.

Former workers said they were glad to see the VA taking their concerns more seriously. But they expressed dismay and confusion that Brenner had ultimately landed in a higher position with the national suicide prevention office. The VA did not answer questions about how many direct reports she’ll have in the new job, if any.

“It’s rewarding bad behavior,” Holliman said. “There’s no real consequence.”

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get health news sent straight to your inbox.

Mike Peterson, during a special meeting of the board Thursday evening, said he planned to resign at the end of the meeting, effective Friday. He previously told the Douglas County News Press that he was stepping down because his family was moving out of state.

Peterson’s term would have expired in November 2025.

Christy Williams — like Peterson, a member of the board’s conservative majority — was elected by a 4-to-3 vote to become the next board president. Peterson declined to recuse himself, voting for Williams over director Susan Meek.

The directors, in nominating Meek and Williams for the chairperson role, said it was crucial the board avoid the bitter infighting that marked the previous two years under Peterson.

Williams cited 25 years of leadership experience as proof that she would make a good board president.

“I don’t stir up drama,” she said.

Three board members were officially sworn in Thursday evening: Meek, an incumbent, Brad Geiger and Valerie Thompson. All three won in November’s election and opposed conservative policies promoted by the board’s majority, which, in addition to Peterson and Williams, includes Becky Myers and Kaylee Winegar.

When a member resigns, Douglas County’s school board has 60 days to appoint a replacement. The president holds the tie-breaking vote in the event of an even split.

Peterson’s time helming Colorado’s third-largest school district has been marked by controversy.

The four-member conservative majority secretly decided in February 2022 to fire the district’s superintendent, Corey Wise, without informing the rest of the board. A judge later ruled that the majority violated Colorado open meeting laws. The district ended up paying more than $100,000 as part of a lawsuit.

Wise in April of last year filed a state and federal discrimination complaint against the school district and the four conservative board members members, saying he was unlawfully fired because he advocated for students with disabilities and students of color.

The district settled that lawsuit earlier this year and agreed to pay Wise more than $830,000.

The superintendent fiasco led to widespread protests from Douglas County teachers, students and parents.

Get more Colorado news by signing up for our Mile High Roundup email newsletter.

Verne Byers, a musician and Denver nightclub owner, had booked England’s most famous rock ‘n’ roll band to perform at the famed Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison the following week.

The Beatles were coming to Colorado.

But eight days before the show, a piece of paper arrived in Byers’ hands. The letter, which had arrived inside an envelope postmarked in Greeley, was comprised of cut-out letters from a magazine taped onto plain white paper.

“If you know what’s good for you, cancel Denver engagement,” the letter read. “I’ll be in the audience and I’m going to throw a hand grenade instead of jelly babies,” referring to the British candy fans famously hurled at the rock stars during the concerts.

The letter’s signature: “Beatle Hater.”

This little-known account is tucked away in the FBI’s once-secret Beatles’ files, a collection of documents that detail the American government’s surveillance of the Fab Four in the 1960s and ’70s — particularly John Lennon’s anti-war activity. The files only became public after a historian fought for their disclosure before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Colorado letter made its way to the FBI’s director, J. Edgar Hoover, and marked the most serious threat on the Beatles’ legendary 1964 North American tour, a marathon 32 performances in 33 days that transformed the concert business in the United States and helped catapult the British band into another stratosphere of global fame.

Nearly 60 years after John, Paul, Ringo and George descended on the Centennial State, the Beatles are back in the news, and on the Billboard charts, with the release of a new — and final — song.

This is the story of the Beatles’ only trip to Colorado — and the threat that could have ruined it all.

Mayhem at the Brown Palace

By early 1964, the Beatles had achieved royalty status in their native England. But Americans had not yet been fully introduced to the famed foursome.

That all changed when the lads from Liverpool appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in New York on Feb. 9 of that year. Some 73 million people tuned in to the hour-long broadcast as the group performed “All My Loving,” “She Loves You,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and other hits.

The show brought Beatlemania to American living rooms — but the 1964 North American tour brought the rock stars directly to their fans.

From the moment the band members landed in San Francisco in August to begin their first U.S. tour, they encountered pure, unadulterated bedlam.

Seconds into their first show there, fans rushed the stage, injuring 19 people. The concert twice had to stop after attendees chucked jelly beans at the performers. The Beatles, after the show, were forced to escape in an ambulance when the crowd mobbed their limousine. Girls at the Vancouver concert were so overwhelmed they vomited.

On Aug. 26, the Beatles arrived in Denver for the sixth stop on the tour. An estimated 10,000 people waited at Stapleton Airport to greet the British sensations, with thousands more lining the streets as a motorcade whisked the band to the Brown Palace Hotel downtown.

The commotion at the hotel grew out of control, earning six crowd members and one police officer a trip to the emergency room, Colorado Public Radio reported in a look back at the Beatles’ ’64 visit.

The band stayed in suite 840 and ordered room service: Five grilled cheese sandwiches, fries and soda, author Chuck Gunderson wrote in his book “Some Fun Tonight!,” which chronicled the Beatles’ three North American tours in the mid-’60s.

The Red Rocks show, though, almost didn’t happen.

Byers nearly fell off his chair when the Beatles’ manager said it would cost $20,000 to book the band, Gunderson wrote — an amount seven times what other musicians charged.

The owner of the Kansas City Athletics baseball team, Charlie Finley, even offered Byers a significant sum to buy the concert and move it there, the author found.

Byers refused.

The Beatles were offered two options for their Denver show: the 22,000-person University of Denver Stadium — which has since been demolished — or the 9,500-seat Red Rocks Amphitheatre in nearby Morrison.

Brian Epstein, the Beatles’ manager, opted for the smaller location because “he felt it was too great a risk to try and fill a 22,000-seat venue in a lower population market,” Gunderson wrote.

Inside the FBI investigation

At least one person, however, wasn’t pleased to see Beatlemania come to Colorado.

The FBI, upon learning of the hand-grenade threat, immediately sent the envelope and letter to a laboratory to scan for fingerprints, according to 25 pages of internal documents posted to the agency’s website.

They came back with no hits.

The threat, according to one memo, fell within the purview of the federal extortion statute.

A U.S. Postal Service inspector in Greeley told authorities he had seen no similar letters, FBI documents show. A Greeley police detective said the same. The FBI even asked Greeley High School whether teachers had seen any similar letters from students over the past year.

A week after the FBI learned of the letter, an unnamed Denver agent wrote that investigators had no information about who might have prepared or mailed in the threat.

Ultimately, the Beatles’ Aug. 26 performance at Red Rocks went off without a hitch, though the FBI files indicate Denver police dispatched 200 officers to handle the crowd. The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office sent an additional 50 people to assist.

On Sept. 18, one month after Denver authorities went to the FBI, the bureau wrote that it had not developed any suspects or subjects and “no further investigation is being conducted.” The case would be closed.

Denver wasn’t the only stop on the tour that included safety threats against the band. In other cities, police sent bomb-sniffing dogs into arenas before concerts, Gunderson said in an interview. Other threats drew extra law enforcement scrutiny.

“They drew so much attention wherever they went,” Gunderson said. “It was very easy for people to get in there and make claims or threats.”

Still, the Denver show represented the most credible threat the Beatles faced on the tour, he said.

George Martin, the Beatles’ producer, later recalled climbing up to the top of the Morrison amphitheater and looking down at the band.

“The amphitheater is such that you could have a sniper on the hill who could pick off any of the fellows at any time — no problem,” Martin said in a 2000 interview. “I was very aware of this, and so was Brian (Epstein), and so were the boys.”

The FBI started keeping files on the Beatles as soon as they landed in San Francisco at the start of the tour, Gunderson said. Agency documents note the tour could be used “as (a) possible vehicle through which riot condition might be brought by an outside organization.”

Later, in the 1970s, the Richard Nixon administration surveilled Lennon, worried that the rock star might combine music with politics to urge young people against voting for the Republican in the 1972 election.

“Don’t be rowdies”

It’s unclear whether the public at the time had any knowledge of the anonymous threat against the band.

News accounts from 1964 seemed more concerned about Denver teens making fools of themselves.

“You have the opportunity of attracting worldwide attention today!” a Rocky Mountain News column printed the morning of the concert read. “Don’t be rowdies. Don’t throw things. Don’t try to smuggle beer or liquor into Red Rocks Theatre. Don’t kick and elbow. Gird on the self-discipline that is the mark of a true American citizen.”

Tickets for the show cost $6.60 — double the usual rate. Despite reporting that suggested there were empty seats because the concert didn’t sell out, Gunderson said lax enforcement from ushers meant legions of fans were able to sneak into the venue without paying.

Another misnomer: There’s no evidence members of the band took hits from oxygen canisters on the stage due to the high altitude, he said.

McCartney, in a later interview, admitted it was hard to breathe during the Red Rocks show.

“It was an interesting experience, physically,” he said.

Joan Baez, the famed singer-songwriter in town for a gig, visited the band backstage.

The Beatles played that night for only 35 minutes. They never came back to Colorado.

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, In The Know, to get entertainment news sent straight to your inbox.

The whistleblower worked for the Prosthetic and Sensory Aids Service, which supplies military veterans with artificial limbs, wheelchairs, surgical implants, glasses, hearing aids and other devices to help them live more functional lives.

Many veterans, however, weren’t getting these services for up to a year — or at all, the whistleblower alleged. That’s because the head of the prosthetics department, Norma Mestas, was directing staff to delete orders as if they had never come in, three former employees who worked in the department told The Denver Post. The motive, they said: reduce wait times and backlogs to make it look as though the department was operating smoothly.

The orders, up to 2,500 at one point, would remain untouched for months, the employees said. Some vets in the end would never get their devices, they alleged.

“I have seen (the prosthetics) service go from broken to highly functioning under our former chief to almost immediately start to crumble and end up where we are today, broken worse than I could have ever imagined,” the whistleblower wrote to VA leadership in an April 2022 follow-up email reviewed by The Post.

This individual, whom The Post agreed not to identify out of concerns about retaliation, said they had raised the issue for more than a year and nothing had been done. Patient care used to be a priority for the eastern Colorado VA, this person wrote to the system’s now-regional director, Sunaina Kumar-Giebel.

But not anymore, the whistleblower wrote: “The veterans that our service serves are suffering and there is the potential for serious health implications or even veteran deaths that could result due to this service’s negligence.”

Last month, VA leaders reassigned the Aurora-based Eastern Colorado Health Care System’s director, Michael Kilmer, and his chief of staff over concerns about “operational oversight, organizational health and workplace culture.” Recent developments, the VA told staff in an email, prompted referrals to federal oversight agencies tasked with investigating these unspecified issues.

The VA has not publicly outlined the problems that prompted the leadership changes in Aurora, but interviews with a dozen current and former nurses, doctors, administrators and high-ranking members of leadership paint the picture of a hostile work environment and a culture of fear among its 4,000-person eastern Colorado workforce.

Workers described to The Post a culture that discourages dissent. Those who report concerns about staffing or improper behavior immediately earn targets on their backs, employees said. The human resources department is weaponized to force out individuals who speak up, they said, leading to high turnover and a staff reticent to bring up problems for fear of having their careers ruined.

Multiple Black employees said they experienced racism in the VA here, including one who settled a discrimination case after being called a monkey by a section chief.

“The employees are all unhappy,” said Sandra Baker, a retired ER physician in Aurora who sued the VA last year after she said she was forced out of her job after 32 years. “There’s no way for you to be able to speak up without being harassed or axed — you just have to take it. That place is not run by people who have any idea what’s going on in the trenches.”

Kilmer declined to comment when contacted by The Post. Mestas did not respond to messages seeking an interview. The VA declined interview requests for this story and did not answer a list of detailed questions about alleged misdeeds. Kayla Giuliano, a department spokesperson, said in a statement that the agency would not comment on internal personnel actions, but that it “takes allegations of discriminatory or improper behavior seriously.”

“You’re breaking the law”

Kilmer assumed the mantle of the eastern Colorado VA system in September 2019 after two-plus years running the VA in Grand Junction. His job purview included managing the gleaming $2 billion Rocky Mountain Regional VA Medical Center in Aurora that had opened just a year prior, along with 11 outpatient facilities spread across the Eastern Plains and San Luis Valley.

The network has a budget of nearly $1 billion and leadership oversees 300 physicians and nearly 800 registered nurses.

As a member of the Coast Guard earlier in his career, Kilmer stood on the verge of becoming an officer when he disclosed to supervisors that he was gay.

Instead of a promotion, the 32-year-old was forced out of the service in 2002, Kilmer said in an interview last year. Soon after, he founded American Veterans for Equal Rights, a nonprofit dedicated to equitable treatment for all members of the U.S. armed forces. Over time, he rose through the VA system’s ranks.

“If someone has raised their right hand and given the oath to serve,” Kilmer told the University of Washington Magazine, “then we owe them support and services when they return.”

Current and former staff, though, say Kilmer’s focus appeared more centered on optics than veteran-centric care.

“I realized I was no longer working for someone striving to be at the top,” said Lee Parmley, who served as Kilmer’s chief of staff until last year. “We were trying not to fall off the bottom rung of the ladder. It was really that bad.”

Nowhere was that more evident than in the prosthetics division, former employees said.

Here’s how it’s supposed to work: Veterans go to their doctors, who then enter what’s known as a “consult” into the system for services to be rendered. This might include home modifications so a paraplegic could get into their car or house, or orders for custom braces and orthotics.

More than 55% of individuals treated this year across the Veterans Health Administration nationwide received prosthetic care, according to the VA’s website, accounting for 21.7 million items, devices and services.

“These dedicated professionals ensure that our veterans have the essential devices needed to improve their overall well-being and quality of life within the comforts of their homes,” the website states.

Mestas became chief of prosthetics in 2021 after spending three years as an executive assistant under Kilmer in Grand Junction, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Current and former workers said Mestas appeared overwhelmed by the job. Quickly the backlog for prosthetics grew.

In November 2021, an employee emailed Mestas’ boss, David Yarbrough, telling him the department had more than 2,000 open consults — half of which were delayed.

“I have never seen the numbers this bad and I do not see them getting better anytime soon,” the worker wrote in an email reviewed by The Post, saying they had “begged for help” since May. “The thought of not taking care of veterans keeps me up at night.”

Mestas had incentives to keep the backlog in check, staff said: As soon as a consult entered the VA system, the clock started ticking. Longer times to complete consults meant worse metrics and a black eye on the department.

So the chief directed newer, lower-level employees to delete consults before ever contacting veterans, the three former department workers told The Post. VA policy mandates staff make at least two attempts within three weeks to contact the individual seeking services. If they don’t respond, staff can close the consult.

But that wasn’t happening.

“I started telling folks, ‘I know your boss is telling you to close these consults, but I’m telling you that this is illegal,'” one former employee told The Post, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they still receive VA benefits and fear retaliation. “‘These are federal policies. You’re breaking the law.'”

When veterans don’t hear anything, they go back to their doctors. The doctor looks at their file, never seeing that the consult was deleted. So they put in another consult — which might get canceled again, the VA workers said. Some veterans just give up, they said, while others pay out of pocket for the equipment.

Electronic signatures in the system show who’s closing these orders. Mestas’ own name appeared on some entries, the former employee said.

“The doctor doesn’t think the prosthetic chief is closing the consults so the vet looks bad and it creates animosity within the VA environment,” the employee said. “Now the vet doesn’t trust the system. It’s perpetual.”

Other unfilled orders would sit in an off-the-books folder and never even be entered into the VA’s official tracking system, multiple employees told The Post. This, in essence, created an illegal, unofficial waitlist that wouldn’t count against the department’s metrics.

The staffer said they saw consults for terminally ill veterans waiting for mobility items to make their final weeks or months more bearable. Those people, this individual said, never got those items before their death.

“I can’t think of anything more disgraceful and heartbreaking,” said another employee who witnessed these actions, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they still work for the VA. “That’s the sole thing the VA is built for — to take care of this population of people who made extraordinary sacrifices. This how is how they’re being treated.”

Emails reviewed by The Post show employees raised concerns about the consults to leadership as early as 2021. In an April 2022 email, one employee told higher-ups that Mestas was either “deliberately trying to hurt the service for whatever reason, or does not have the knowledge and experience to effectively run this service.”

“Either way, the veterans are suffering as a result,” this person wrote.

A regional prosthetic official, Daniel Gnatz, in a reply email, acknowledged that he wasn’t sure where Mestas “is getting her direction from or what she is thinking.”

But a year-and-a-half later, employees said the consult management practice continued. Mestas, though, appears to no longer be with the department, according to staff members. She did not answer calls from The Post and the VA would not comment on her job status.

Mestas, on her email signature, includes a quote from Jocko Willink, a retired U.S. Navy SEAL officer: “There are no bad teams, only bad leaders.”

“No one is to say a thing”

Problems inside the VA under Kilmer didn’t stop at the prosthetic department’s doors.

During the early rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine, the VA in Aurora received a batch of doses. Staff put them in a freezer, but someone forgot to shut the door, the current employee said. As a result, hundreds or even thousands of doses defrosted overnight, the employee said.

With the clock ticking on using these doses, most ended up going to hospital staff instead of the older veterans, this person said.

Kilmer, during a meeting with leadership, said they would be filing a report with the regional office saying the freezer broke, not that someone left it open, the employee said.

“He said, ‘We’re not going to report this,'” the staffer, who took part in the meeting, said. “‘No one is to say a thing.'”

The fully functional freezer, after the incident, was put in the VA basement near the service elevator to collect dust, the employee said.

The employee who witnessed the meeting filed a report with the VA’s Office of Inspector General. They said they were never contacted. Several individuals discussed reporting it up the chain of command but feared retribution.

“If you value your career at all,” the employee said, “you know there’s gonna be repercussions for saying things.”

Fear of retribution

The theme of employees fearing reprisal for reporting misconduct or other issues was pervasive among the dozen current and former VA workers who spoke with The Post.

Dr. Ronald Robinson learned this firsthand while serving as deputy chief of staff under Kilmer from 2020 until last year.

In December 2021, they sounded the alarm over a critical shortage of practitioners on the VA’s primary care team.

In a memo to leadership reviewed by The Post, Robinson said the department had 22 vacancies for licensed independent practitioners out of 119 positions — or 18% of the jobs unfilled. One Colorado clinic was down nine people. As a result, Robinson wrote, the VA would be faced with transferring more than 2,000 veterans from this clinic to community providers or increasing the caseloads of other providers.

“That was the start of the end for me,” Robinson said in an interview.

The chief medical officer at the regional level convened a meeting in Denver after the memo, Robinson said, yelling and threatening to take over the service.

The physician filed a complaint with the VA’s Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection — a move Robinson later called a huge mistake.

“I was sadly naive,” they said. “That just painted a huge target on me.”

Robinson ended up being fired for not filling out a timesheet correctly, they said, along with not watching certain training videos for driving a government vehicle. Their first day of unemployment? Veteran’s Day 2022.

“You just sweep the problem under the rug by firing the person,” they said. “That was their mode of operating.”

Multiple VA employees told The Post that leadership attempted to force them out the door by making their lives miserable.

Baker, the retired ER doctor, said she was reassigned in 2019 to a storage room filled with boxes that didn’t have connectivity for a computer or phone. It was punishment, she said, for filing complaints over sexist working conditions under her male supervisor. The VA even manipulated records to make it appear Baker was incompetent, she alleged in a lawsuit filed against the VA last year. An appeals board ruled in her favor.

From June through December, Baker read books, checked out bathrooms on other floors and chatted with cafeteria workers.

“What a waste of government resources,” she said. “I’m an experienced ER doctor and I’m just sitting there.”

Parmley, the former chief of staff, said internal investigations served as a way for leadership to remove people from their positions.

“It was quite a vindictive place,” he said.

A Black employee filed eight complaints over discrimination, disparate treatment, poor hiring practices and whistleblower violations. In May, the individual was stripped of all his responsibilities, he said. Now he sits at home, responding to a few emails, but otherwise “I don’t do (expletive),” he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of additional retribution.

“The VA hospital here does more to not do work than to do work,” he said.

This incident marked one of several racist allegations raised by employees at the Aurora facility.

One employee said he overheard Mestas, the prosthetics chief, call a Black employee a “dirty N-word,” according to a memo reviewed by The Post. The department found the claim to be unsubstantiated — though the employee who reported it said in an email that he was never asked to testify.

Garland Dotson, a Black Air Force veteran, received a settlement from the VA in August after he alleged a section chief told him “You look like a monkey,” adding motions with her arms. Dotson went public with the allegations two years ago.

On a separate occasion, Dotson said, his boss told him another VA worker stated he had “Black rage.”

“How is it possible people are getting away with this?” Dotson said in an interview. “It’s the culture Kilmer created.”

The Aurora VA’s nurses, meanwhile, have sounded the alarm for years over what they call unsafe working conditions and critically low staffing at the hospital.

In July, National Nurses United, a nationwide union representing nurses, rallied outside the hospital, demanding management address the “epidemic of violence” at the facility. Workers reported being assaulted, kicked, spit at, hit and threatened on a daily basis.

“It feels like our concerns are being dismissed,” Sharda Fornnarino, president of the nurses’ union who works at the VA, told The Post. “We feel defeated.”

Kilmer, during the outside investigation, will serve on a temporary assignment working on a project with the Boise VA in Idaho. Dr. Shilpa Rungta, his chief of staff, was temporarily reassigned to be a physician adviser to the assistant undersecretary for health for clinical services.

Both are eligible to return to their leadership posts.

Current and former employees said they hope the leadership changes stay permanent — a chance for the Aurora VA to wipe the slate clean and rebuild the culture that has long soured.

“I hope some healing can now begin,” Robinson said. “This will benefit the veterans receiving the care they need.”

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get health news sent straight to your inbox.

In an all-staff email to the VA’s Aurora-headquartered Eastern Colorado Health Care System, the regional director, Sunaina Kumar-Giebel, said “recent developments” on these matters have been referred to the Veterans Health Administration’s Office of the Medical Inspector, which investigates health care issues raised by veterans.

She did not specify the exact issues that led to the leadership changes.

“Concurrently, VA is making temporary leadership adjustments to facilitate this review and expedite the necessary changes to meet our obligations to the veterans we serve,” Kumar-Giebel wrote in the email, which was reviewed by The Denver Post.

Effective Nov. 6, Michael Moore will take over as interim director, while Dr. Matthew Talarczyk will serve as acting chief of staff until an interim candidate is identified, according to the email.

The VA’s current director for eastern Colorado, Michael Kilmer, is no longer listed on the agency’s website. The chief of staff, Shilpa A. Rungta, also has been removed from the leadership page. Both appeared on an archived version of the site as recently as June.

Spokesperson Kayla Giuliano told The Post in an email Monday that both remain VA employees and have the potential to resume their posts. Kilmer will take on a temporary assignment with the Boise VA Medical Center in Idaho, she said, while Rungta will temporarily serve as a physician adviser.

Rungta, reached by phone Monday, said she couldn’t comment on the changes. Kilmer could not be reached.

Giuliano would not elaborate on the workplace concerns mentioned in the all-staff email, only saying veteran care will not be impacted by the leadership transition.

The eastern Colorado system includes the main Aurora campus in addition to 11 outpatient facilities in the region throughout the Eastern Plains and San Luis Valley. It serves nearly 100,000 veterans and has a budget of nearly $1 billion. Leadership oversees around 4,000 full-time employees, including 300 physicians and 776 registered nurses.

Kilmer had served as the agency’s director since September 2019. He previously spent two-and-a-half years as director and chief executive officer of the VA Grand Junction health care system.

Rungta had been chief medical officer and chief of staff with the eastern Colorado VA since July 2022, according to her LinkedIn profile. Before that, she served in a similar position for a VA system in Bedford, Massachusetts.

U.S. Rep. Jason Crow, a Democrat representing Aurora and a veteran himself, said in a statement that he’s been briefed on the internal review and is monitoring the situation closely.

In July, National Nurses United, a nationwide union representing nurses, rallied outside Aurora’s Rocky Mountain Regional VA Medical Center to demand management address the “epidemic of violence” at the facility.

“Nurses are being assaulted, kicked, spit at, hit and threatened on a daily basis,” said Ricardo Ortega, a registered nurse who works at the facility, in a news release. “We have nurses who are scared to come to work or leaving our facility because of these worsening issues. We have brought up these issues to management but instead of addressing them, they are coming after those of us who are speaking out to demand a safe workplace.”

Another nurse, Jaci Graul, said she had a patient threaten to shoot her recently — just one example of the “daily onslaught” nurses face.

“We demand that VA management take these threats seriously,” she said in the news release.

A former employee at the Aurora facility in August settled a complaint with the VA over hostile work environment concerns, Denver7 reported. The whistleblower, Garland Dotson, told the news station that a VA section chief told him he looked like a monkey.

The Aurora VA hospital opened in July 2018, promising an “unprecedented quality of health care.” The facility, though, exceeded its initial budget by $1 billion and ended up costing more than $2 billion — making it one of the costliest health care facilities in the world.

The spiraling costs featured failed sewers, broiling elevators, downspouts spewing hazardous liquid and other malfunctions.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get health news sent straight to your inbox.

Sculpted around the 10th century, the 38-inch sandstone piece depicts a celestial woman beneath a mango tree. It was once part of the Ghatesvara Temple in northern India, built as a shrine to the Hindu god Shiva.

Indian archaeologists, for years, said this priceless work was stolen. Four years ago, the museum quietly handed the statue to U.S. law enforcement to be repatriated to India.

Denver Art Museum officials did not issue a press release. The artifact has been scrubbed from the institution’s website as if it was never there. Aside from saved webpages on Internet archives, there’s no public-facing evidence that the statue was once a part of the museum’s collection.

RELATED: Looted: Stolen relics, laundered art and a Colorado scholar’s role in the illicit antiquities trade

For years, the Denver museum has carefully curated which repatriations and deaccessions — pieces removed from its collection — it chooses to publicly announce, a practice that goes against industry recommendations. Unlike some other institutions, it’s impossible in Denver to see which pieces, and how many, the museum has returned after foreign governments or U.S. authorities provided evidence that they were stolen or illegally trafficked.

Other institutions, including Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and the San Antonio Museum of Art, provide detailed information for all works they choose to remove from their collections — though that practice still represents the exception, not the rule.

Art experts say this should be the gold standard, an important tool for transparency and accountability as a public institution with an educational mission.

“Museums should be telling these stories not just for the sake of transparency but because they are intrinsically important stories that tell us really deep and meaningful things about how we understand other peoples’ cultural belongings,” said Elizabeth Marlowe, a professor of art and director of Colgate University’s museum studies program. “That’s central to any universal museum.”

A Denver Art Museum spokesperson, Andy Sinclair, said the institution follows all field guidelines, practices and policies for collections and deaccessions. The museum is focused, she said in an email, on adding to its online collection database. Information on deaccessions will be made available “upon request,” she said.

A plundered past

Kirit Mankodi has been tracking the celestial goddess for nearly 20 years.

The retired archaeologist runs a website called Plundered Past that traces stolen Indian antiquities around the world.

In 2005, Mankodi wrote to the Archaeological Survey of India, the national agency in charge of protecting the country’s rich cultural heritage. He provided detailed evidence that the Denver piece had been stolen from the Ghatesvara Temple sometime in the 1960s.

The archaeologist included images from Indian authorities, showing the sculpture still in place in 1960. By the time Dr. Lakshmi Kant Tripath wrote “The Temples of Baroli” in 1975, the stone work had been looted.

Indian law protects artifacts in the country’s numerous ancient temples, forbidding their sale or transfer abroad.

In 1965, financier and art collector Christian Humann loaned the artwork to the Denver Art Museum as part of his Pan-Asian Collection. He chose the Mile High City for his impressive collection after cultivating a friendship with a Denver museum trustee and research consultant, Emma C. Bunker.

Bunker’s close relationship with dealers and collectors helped the Denver Art Museum build its 7,000-piece Asian art collection. But these close ties also led the museum to acquire a host of objects that had been looted from countries like Cambodia and Thailand, The Post found in a three-part investigation last year.

The Pan-Asian Collection has also come under scrutiny in recent years for its questionable origins. Many of Humann’s pieces, in auctions or in major American museums, have no provenance, or ownership history, going back earlier than the collector himself. This includes an 8th-century Thai bronze still in the Denver Art Museum’s collection that has no ownership details earlier than Humann.

At least five other Thai bronzes from the famed Prakhon Chai hoard can be traced to this collection — pieces the federal government is now investigating. The Post revealed last year that looters stole these pieces in the 1960s from a secret temple vault near the Cambodian border and sold them to disgraced dealer Douglas Latchford, with the help of Bunker’s scholarship. Many ended up, and remain, at prestigious museums such as New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Records show Ellsworth, who purchased much of Humann’s collection, gifted the Indian relic to the Denver museum in 1982 after the loan expired.

After alerting Indian authorities to the plundered Denver piece, Mankodi said he sent a letter in May 2010 to the museum’s Asian art curator, including the same photographic documentation.

The curator, Ronald Otsuka, responded promptly, Mankodi said. But when the archaeologist said this stolen artifact belonged back in India, the curator stopped replying, he said.

“He didn’t write to me again,” Mankodi said.

Otsuka did not respond to requests from The Post for comment.

Sinclair, the Denver Art Museum spokesperson, said 2015 marked the first repatriation request from the Indian government. The following year, museum officials hosted U.S. law enforcement officials, providing requested provenance information.

U.S. officials in 2018 provided the museum with “images, measurements and facts enabling the museum to confirm the object was illegally removed from the Baroli temple,” Sinclair said.

The same week, she said, the museum initiated the process of deaccessioning the relic for its eventual repatriation to India.

The item remains in possession of the U.S. government, a spokesperson with Homeland Security Investigations confirmed this week. There’s no date set for its return.

Disappearing objects

When the celestial goddess remained part of the Denver Art Museum’s collection, anyone could find its photo, description and provenance information on the institution’s website.

But at least as far back as September 2019, museum officials scrubbed the antiquity from the site. The link to its entry now says “the requested page could not be found.” An archived version of the webpage can still be accessed through the Internet Archive’s Way Back Machine.

The same is true for other artworks the museum has deaccessioned in recent years. A host of Southeast Asian relics donated to the museum by Bunker in 2016 also have vanished from the website amid the federal investigation.

Further ommissions include dozens of pieces donated or sold to the museum by indicted or convicted art dealers, such as Latchford and former New York gallery owners Nancy Wiener and Subhash Kapoor.

Latchford sold, loaned and gifted at least 14 works to the Denver Art Museum between 1999 and 2011. But his name no longer appears in any provenance section on the museum’s searchable collection database.

Museum leadership sometimes puts out press releases when it gives up artworks to U.S. authorities for repatriation to source countries. Those announcements include multiple objects returned to Cambodia since 2016, a collection of Indian works given back last year and older repatriations to Guatemala and a Native American tribe.

But pieces such as the celestial goddess garnered no public announcement. And the press releases for these repatriated pieces do not include accession numbers, provenance information or object descriptions — all key for academics, law enforcement and members of the public interested in researching a museum’s collection.

The Association of Art Museum Directors, an organization of museum leaders from the United States, Canada and Mexico, in 2010 issued a recommendation that member museums “publish on its website within a reasonable period of time works that have been deaccessioned and disposed of.”

The guidance is simply a recommendation, though, not a requirement.

Still, after the association published the policy, a growing body of museums have adopted the practice of maintaining a database with deaccessioned works.

The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston allows the public to see information about all 2,289 objects the institution has removed from its collection.

The museum includes extensive information about the items and their ownership histories. The institution deaccessioned a 7th-century Italian vessel, for instance, after New York authorities supplied evidence it had been looted.

The object page outlines how the piece was illicitly excavated and sold to a New York collector before making its way into the museum’s collection in the 1990s. Museum officials note that the vessel was one of nine that came from a site that had been heavily looted and was later trafficked by a known illicit antiquities dealer.

“We feel transparency is important,” said Victoria Reed, the Boston museum’s curator for provenance. “We have a particular responsibility to our audience. We’re a public institution. If we decide to deaccession something, to remove it from public view, then we are accountable to our audience. We have a responsibility to share our thinking and information that led us to conclude what we did.”

The San Antonio Art Museum also faced this question in 2021 while repatriating objects to Italy. The simplest solution, museum leadership decided, was to keep the items on the institution’s website with updated details.

Researchers who want to study them will still be able to get information this way, since the museum can’t provide access to items no longer in its collection, said Lynley J. McAlpine, the San Antonio museum’s associate curator of provenance research.

“We hope that doing so will make information easy for people to find,” she said.

The Dallas Museum of Art and Cleveland Museum of Art also provide details of deaccessioned works on their websites. The Met in New York this month pledged to soon do the same for restituted objects.

“A way to admit mistakes”

Former museum directors and other industry experts say the Denver Art Museum should adopt these best practices as it continues to probe its collection for problematic works.

In recent years, the museum’s past questionable dealings with suspected or convicted illicit antiquity dealers have put a spotlight on the Mile High City’s preeminent art institution. In response, the museum last year hired a full-time senior provenance researcher, calling the work an “essential component of our commitment to ethical collecting practices.”

But the public, industry watchers say, continues to be left in the dark.

“It’s embarrassing,” said David Gill, a professor of archaeological heritage at the University of Kent in England. “It shows your curators have been recommending dodgy things for the museum. It shows the trustees haven’t really engaged in due diligence. It shows museums are actors closing a blind eye to the problem.”

The selective press releases, Gill said, seem to serve more as controlling the publicity.

“It’s all about, ‘We’ve done the right thing,'” he said, “rather than saying, ‘How did you get into this position in the first place?'”

While repatriations can be seen as bad press for a museum, they’re not antithetical to an institution’s mission, said Marlowe, the Colgate University professor.

“The Denver Art Museum could have a really powerful, honest display in which they say, ‘When we accepted these objects 30 years ago, we understood them differently,'” she said. “Telling that story of that broad shift in cultural values is a way to admit mistakes, show they’ve learned and bring audiences into the story.”

Get more Colorado news by signing up for our daily Your Morning Dozen email newsletter.

Jareh Sebastian Dalke, 31, a Colorado Springs resident, pleaded guilty to six counts of attempting to transmit national defense information to a foreign government. As part of the agreement, prosecutors said they will recommend 262 months in prison — though a federal judge will ultimately determine the sentence.

He faced a potential death sentence after being charged last year with three violations of the Espionage Act.

Dalke, as part of a plea deal, admitted to transmitting files last year to an undercover FBI agent with the intent to injure the United States and benefit Russia, according to the agreement.

Between August and September 2022, Dalke used an encrypted email account to send excerpts of three classified documents to the FBI agent, believing them to be a Russian agent, authorities said. He requested $85,000 in exchange for the classified information.

He told the agent that “he had taken highly sensitive information relating to foreign targeting of U.S. systems, and information on U.S. cyber operations, among other topics,” prosecutors said.

Dalke then arranged to transfer additional information to the supposed agent at Denver’s Union Station.

“My friends!” the NSA worker wrote in a letter included in court documents. “I am very happy to finally provide this information to you… I look forward to our friendship and shared benefit. Please let me know if there are desired documents to find and I will try when I return to my main office.”

Moments after he sent the files on Sept. 28, 2022, the FBI arrested Dalke.

He is set to be sentenced April 26.

Dalke was a state-certified Colorado law enforcement officer who has served with the Colorado Rangers, a volunteer organization that provides reserve police officers to agencies statewide.

He previously served in the U.S. Army as a private first-class.

In 2017, he filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection, saying he owed tens of thousands in student loan and credit card debt.

Investigators say Dalke expressed disillusionment with the U.S. and its treatment of military service members. He reached out to Russia, authorities said, after learning of his familial ties to the country.

Sign up to get crime news sent straight to your inbox each day.

Denver’s Department of Excise and Licenses on Monday accepted owner Daniel Kim’s request to surrender his license to operate the Regis Motel at 8282 E. Colfax Ave., according to city documents.

Kim told The Denver Post last month that he sold the motel earlier this year but forgot to surrender his license. The new owner, Geradette Borrego, never applied for a new license, city officials said. She received a summons from the Denver City Attorney’s Office for operating without a license.

The city took the unusual step in September of suspending the Regis Motel’s license, saying it had become a den for prostitution, drug sales, illegal weapons and burglaries, and was the site of a fatal shooting.

Police said last month that they were continuing to investigate crimes that occurred at the motel.

The move marked the first time the city had issued an immediate suspension to a lodging establishment over serious health and safety concerns.

Get more Colorado news by signing up for our daily Your Morning Dozen email newsletter.

“I can’t believe Colorado is going through this again,” the Avon Democrat said. “Why is this continuing to happen in our state? It doesn’t seem to happen in most other states.”

The situation was gruesome: Authorities found at least 189 improperly stored bodies in the funeral home specializing in green burial, an operation its owners had been running without a license. State regulators seemed to have no idea.

The grisly news from the southern Colorado mortuary shined a spotlight on the state’s lax oversight of funeral homes and crematories. Colorado remains the only state in the country that doesn’t license funeral directors or require some certification. State officials don’t regularly inspect funeral homes and only devote one-quarter of one full-time position to regulate 220 funeral homes and 77 crematories.

After a five-year stretch that also included federal charges for two Western Slope funeral home operators and jail time for a high country coroner, Roberts said it’s long past time to close loopholes in Colorado’s regulatory framework.

The Colorado Funeral Directors Association agrees.

“If you’re running an upstanding funeral home, there should be no worries whatsoever,” said Joe Walsh, the association’s president.

“Demand that the issue be revisited”

Last week, the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies — which regulates the state’s funeral homes — published a 57-page sunset review of the state’s mortuary science code.

Sunset reviews evaluate the need for the continued existence of a program or agency. When laws are set to “sunset,” or expire, agencies perform an assessment of the effectiveness of the program and recommend changes to the legislature. Colorado’s funeral home regulations are set to expire in July, unless acted upon by lawmakers.

In its review, the state agency noted that “recent events clearly indicate that additional governmental oversight is warranted to ensure the public trust in the funeral industry.”

State regulators recommended several changes to lawmakers regarding Colorado’s oversight structure. The biggest: requiring the Department of Regulatory Agencies to conduct inspections of funeral homes and crematories on a “routine periodic basis” as well as when a facility closes operations.

Until last year, if state officials wanted to inspect a funeral home or crematory, the business had to grant permission.

In light of the Shannon Kent scandal — in which authorities found an unrefrigerated body, bags of unlabeled cremated remains and an abandoned stillborn infant at his high country funeral homes — Roberts ran a bill last year that allowed unannounced inspections of these facilities.

But in practice, the department only inspects funeral homes and crematories following complaints. Routine inspections do not occur, a practice commonplace in other states.

As of August, state regulators have conducted nine inspections under this new authority, the agency’s review states. Six resulted in letters of admonition, two led to registration relinquishments and one funeral home was placed on probation.

While it’s too early to say whether the 2022 bill has been effective, the report’s authors noted Colorado’s recent troubling history with funeral homes and crematories.

In 2018, the FBI raided the Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors in Montrose. A subsequent investigation found the owners, Shirley Koch and Megan Hess, had been illegally selling body parts without families’ permission. A judge in January sentenced the pair to 15 and 20 years, respectively, in federal prison.

These events, in addition to the Lake County and Penrose investigations, “demand that the issue be revisited,” the review states.

“It is impossible to say whether the events that occurred on the Western Slope and in Lake County, or even more recent events, would have been discovered sooner had routine inspections been a component of the regulation of funeral homes and crematories,” the report’s authors wrote, “but it is at least reasonable to question.”

Routine periodic inspections, regulators said, could motivate funeral home owners to comply with the law, reducing or preventing the likelihood of such events.

The Return to Nature case also spotlighted another weak link in state law.

That facility had let its registration expire last year, but the current statute does not allow inspectors to enter an unlicensed facility — even if they receive a complaint.

The sunset review recommends extending the state’s authority to allow regulators to inspect these facilities for an undetermined amount of time after a license is relinquished or revoked.

Roberts, the state lawmaker, said he’ll probably draft legislation to mandate these routine inspections in an upcoming bill this session. Walsh, the funeral home association’s president, said he’s also enthusiastic about the proposal, though he’s pushing for inspectors to be knowledgeable about the industry.

One problem: The Department of Regulatory Agencies doesn’t have staff or funding to conduct regular inspections statewide.

The department only devotes $74,222 annually to regulatory functions of funeral homes and crematories. It’s staffed with less than one full-time employee.

“Clearly it’s not enough,” Roberts said, adding that he would support finding money in the budget for increased funds. “This is a public safety issue.”

A Department of Regulatory Agencies spokesperson, Katie O’Donnell, said the agency is waiting to see what the bill will include, noting increased regulation typically comes with more money.

“Right now we’re doing OK with what we have,” she said.

Licensing people, not just businesses

In addition to periodic inspections, state lawmakers are considering whether to license funeral home directors, a practice performed by every other state besides Colorado. Currently, the state only licenses funeral home businesses, not people.

The issue isn’t new.

More than 100 years ago, concerns about the danger to public health led to the formation of the Colorado State Board of Embalming Examiners, the sunset review states.

For years, Colorado licensed funeral home directors. But in 1977, a state review recommended the elimination of the board overseeing the industry professionals.

In 1990, 2002 and 2007, state regulators recommended against the regulation of individuals.

But the tides are shifting.

In June, the Colorado Office of Policy, Research & Regulatory Reform received an application seeking the regulation of funeral service professionals, including mortuary science practitioners, funeral directors, cremationists, embalmers and natural reductionists.

That report will be presented to the state legislature by the end of December.

Colorado, under current law, only regulates funerary businesses, not their operators. It means the owners of Return to Nature could open another funeral home tomorrow if they wished.

Those who run funeral homes don’t need to earn a high school degree, pass an exam or serve as an apprentice.

“Colorado definitely has some of the least strict laws in the country,” said Chris Farmer, general counsel for the National Funeral Directors Association.

His organization has spoken to Colorado regulators, recommending basic educational requirements and licensure for funeral directors, along with background checks.

“Funeral service isn’t one where you can kick the door open and let it be a free-for-all,” Farmer said.

The Colorado Funeral Directors Association helps funeral home workers self-certify with mortuary science and certified embalming technician certificates, but none of it is required by law.

“The vast majority of funeral directors in the state have not done them,” Walsh said. “People don’t wanna join us because we have no legal standing.”

Walsh said his members support more robust licensure.

Lawmakers are still considering which funeral home employees would need to be licensed under the proposed bill, Roberts said. Requirements could include certificate and apprenticeship programs but not higher-level bachelor’s or master’s degrees.

After this year’s legislative session, the state senator already had started working on language. Then Penrose happened, adding new urgency to the bill.

“This isn’t about over-regulating businesses,” Roberts said. “This is about those business owners doing the right thing to make sure the public is protected. No matter where you bring your loved one, we want to make sure they’re regulated properly.”

Get more Colorado news by signing up for our daily Your Morning Dozen email newsletter.

That revelation, which has not been publicized, came out during a legal squabble between Wyatts’ parent company, Towing Holdings, and former CFO Robert Plimpton over his retention of documents following his departure from the company. The towing giant sued Plimpton in April, saying he had stolen trade secrets in violation of his contract.

Plimpton, in a court filing responding to the lawsuit, said he first relayed concerns to the company’s CEO, Trevor Forbes, regarding improper accounting and IRS violations related to booking personal expenses as business expenditures.

After reporting the alleged unlawful conduct, Plimpton said Wyatts’ leadership retaliated by asking him to resign. So Plimpton, before his final day on the job, forwarded himself some 100 documents “for purposes of reporting to law enforcement,” according to the filing.

“These practices not only expose our company and us to significant legal and financial risks but also undermine the values and principles that I hold dear,” Plimpton wrote in his resignation letter, which is included in court documents. “I refuse to lend my talents and expertise to such a leader.”

Plimpton on Friday declined to comment on the lawsuit or whistleblower complaint. Wyatts, through its attorney, also declined to comment.

The Colorado Attorney General’s Office has not responded to questions from The Denver Post about Plimpton’s complaint.

The whistleblower complaint is not included in the court filings. Plimpton only makes references to it in his rebuttal, but does not include the full details of what he alleges to be illegal conduct.

Attorney General Phil Weiser took the unusual step in August of confirming his office’s active investigation into Wyatts following the tow of a state senator. That probe remains ongoing and few details have emerged concerning the investigation’s focus.

Towing Holdings sought, and received, a restraining order from a Denver judge preventing Plimpton from disseminating the proprietary information he had sent to his personal email account before he left the company.

After the company demanded Plimpton return the documents, Plimpton responded by sending Forbes “obscene and erratic messages” that included threats, according to Towing Holdings’ complaint.

“I am your worst nightmare,” Plimpton said in a text, according to the court filing. “You are going to want to settle this. You will not be able to ignore me. I understand if you are regretful, and even scared. You should be. Fight me, and it could be over.”

The former CFO also demanded $2 million, the company alleged.

Plimpton said the lawsuit, though, was not about the trade secrets. Instead, he alleged in a court filing, the company sought to deter him from complying with a subpoena from the Colorado Attorney General’s Office.

The towing giant has come under fire in recent months for what consumer advocates and lawmakers say is a blatant attempt to circumvent last year’s Towing Bill of Rights.

A proposed class action lawsuit filed last week accused Wyatts of “serial violations” of the 2022 law, which sought to give vehicle owners greater protections.

Get more Colorado news by signing up for our daily Your Morning Dozen email newsletter.