XPost: alt.postalworkers, alt.society.labor-unions, sac.politics
XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh

Aurora U.S. Postal Service supervisor Caroline Zarete Boyle
accused subordinate Lisa Roberts of faking cancer, repeatedly
asking Roberts why she didn’t lose her hair and forcing her to
work in a frigid basement in winter.

Then something strange happened.

After Roberts lost her job and moved to Texas, Boyle announced
she had been diagnosed with cancer — the same type of lymphoma
that Roberts has been fighting for years. Boyle claimed she was
going to Rocky Mountain Cancer Centers. It was the same place
Roberts had gone to for cancer care.

Was it poetic justice? Or something more nefarious?

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Raymond Moore ordered Boyle, 60,
to serve 652 hours of community service at a cancer treatment
center, cancer research center or hospice when she was sentenced
for fraud for faking cancer. Boyle also was sentenced to five
years of probation and ordered to pay a $10,000 fine and
$20,798.38 in restitution to the USPS. Boyle must serve six
months of home detention in Highlands Ranch.

“She impersonated me by claiming she had lymphoma,” Roberts said
in a telephone interview with The Denver Post. Armed with
Roberts’ confidential medical records that Boyle had demanded,
Boyle created a new persona — modeled on Roberts’ cancer.

After accusing Roberts of pretending to have cancer so she could
take an extended vacation and denying Roberts accommodations to
deal with the pain, nausea and fear of dying, Boyle mimicked
Roberts’ life by forging medical records.

Boyle then enjoyed all the benefits afforded someone with a life-
threatening illness, including “compassionate teleworking
privileges,” abbreviated workdays, working at home and taking
lengthy medical leave for treatment she never received.

Boyle had been talking to staff about taking a vacation to
Hawaii when she misspelled a doctor’s name in a medical report.
Her masquerade then collapsed.

Roberts recalls the day in April 2010 when Boyle began bullying
her in vivid detail. Boyle called a staff meeting the day
Roberts returned to work after a grueling three months of
stomach biopsies and radiation treatment. Roberts had “crawled”
back to work earlier than she wanted so she could reserve
medical leave to have a procedure for an unrelated heart
condition.

“Well, Lisa is back,” Roberts recalled Boyle saying as she
opened the meeting. “You didn’t even lose your hair. Why didn’t
you lose your hair? It looks like you went on vacation.”

It was apparent Boyle expected an explanation. Roberts, then 50,
couldn’t breathe. Co-workers looked at her with horror and
sympathy.

“I have stomach cancer. I never had chemotherapy,” Roberts
recounted saying while shaking. “I had radiation treatment and I
didn’t lose my hair.”

When Roberts asked to be moved to an empty cubicle away from the
cafeteria because food smells made her nauseous, Boyle refused.
In fact, Boyle sometimes approached Roberts’ desk while eating
Chinese takeout and snickering. Roberts believes Boyle did that
to torment her.

In the winter of 2010, shortly after Roberts’ cancer treatment,
when high temperatures were in the teens, Boyle ordered her to
work in a cement basement that “felt like a dungeon.” She wore a
coat but still shivered. Her heart would race. One day, Roberts
approached another supervisor after she climbed stairs and felt
faint because of her heart condition.

“I think she’s trying to kill me,” Roberts told the woman.

“I know. I think she is,” the supervisor replied.

Ultimately, Roberts’ position — along with several other
colleagues — was eliminated in 2012. Boyle helped make the
decision. While other employees got new jobs in the same office,
Roberts wasn’t offered a position. Instead, she moved to a
Postal Service office in Dallas while still undergoing regular
cancer treatments.

Five years after she moved, a former co-worker called Roberts at
her new home in Tennessee and read a headline from The Denver
Post: “Aurora U.S. postal worker indicted after botching
doctor’s name on forged sick note about fictitious cancer
illness.”

The story said Boyle, a postal employee and supervisor for 25
years, took 112 days of sick leave from USPS’s customer products
and fulfillment category management center in Aurora. She faced
up to 20 years in prison. Suspicious of Boyle’s professed cancer
condition, a supervisor had discovered in June 2016 that she
misspelled the name of her supposed cancer doctor.

Postal Service inspectors discovered that the oncologist, as
well as nurses and administrators, had never heard of Boyle. She
wasn’t their patient. As it turned out, Boyle had manufactured
Rocky Mountain Cancer Centers stationery, which didn’t include
the doctor’s medical license number.

Roberts was transfixed by Boyle’s criminal case. She began doing
her own research and discovered that another of Boyle’s forged
medical records was signed by Dr. Ioana Hinshaw. But she
mistakenly believe there were no oncologists in Colorado by that
name so she called the U.S. District Attorney’s Office.

On Tuesday, Roberts looked over at Boyle as she sat in the
witness chair. Boyle snickered.

Judge Moore later cautioned Boyle to never look at him the way
she had looked at Roberts. He called Boyle a heartless woman.

While Roberts thinks Moore was too lenient, she approves of the
requirement that Boyle must volunteer at a cancer treatment
facility or hospice center. But it’s not enough.

“She had accused me all those years of faking. … One thing
she’ll never have to go through is a bone marrow test. That
woman has no idea what it’s like to have 14 stomach biopsies. …
She’ll never know what it’s like to wonder whether this holiday
is their last. The pain and misery I went through I did not
fake.”

Updated Aug. 31, 2017 at 10 a.m. The following corrected
information has been added to this article: Dr. Ioana Hinshaw is
a practicing oncologist in Colorado.

http://www.denverpost.com/2017/08/25/us-postal-boss-cancer-
sufferer-faking/

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