She was jailed for drunk driving. Instead she had had a stroke, didn't get help for days

PORT ORCHARD, Wash. — A woman accused of drunken driving and jailed really had suffered a stroke, and despite multiple contacts with police and corrections officers, she went days without medical attention.

Carol Carlson, 64, of Edmonds, Washington, drove to the Kingston ferry terminal on a Monday morning in December 2017. Washington State Patrol troopers who accused her of DUI when she got turned around at the toll booth set off a five-day odyssey that shows how a person in distress can fall through the cracks.

“Once it started, it kept going,” Carlson said. “And nobody stopped it.”

After being released from Kitsap County Jail in Port Orchard less than a day after her arrest, she wandered the streets in a fog — without a coat, a phone or her medications — eventually winding up a ferry ride away in a Bremerton homeless shelter where she suffered seizures and finally was hospitalized.

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Family and friends could not find her for another two days. Until the Kitsap (County, Wash.) Sun arranged arrest reports, prosecutor’s notes, jail records, medical forms, 911 calls and interviews to reconstruct the path she took, Carlson did not know many of the details.

“It was such a horror movie,” said Carlson’s daughter, Lynn Moore, of Bellingham, Washington, about 20 miles from the U.S.-Canada border.

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Moore wonders how two state troopers and whoever drew her mother’s blood to test for alcohol — plus a Bremerton police officer and Kitsap County Jail staff — never seemed to question whether she needed a doctor.

“This is really happening?” Moore thought at the time. “The whole thing is crazy.”

Carlson, a retired travel agent, had finalized a divorce a few months prior and was house-sitting for friends in Hansville.

A head injury in 2014 had hastened her retirement and left her with ongoing health problems, but she remained independent and never stopped traveling. While house-sitting, Carlson took the opportunity to drive out to the far end of the Olympic Peninsula, staying nights in Neah Bay and La Push and returning to Hansville two days before her arrest.

Carlson arrived at the toll booth at about 10:30 a.m. PST Dec. 11, 2017, to board a ferry home and asked a worker if she had to pay cash. The worker pointed to a sign showing the credit cards accepted.

“She was very confussed (sic) as to how she wanted to pay and just sat there looking at me,” the worker wrote in a statement included in police reports. “She then stated she would leave and come back when she had decided what she wanted to use.”

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Another ferry worker was summoned to help with the customer “who seemed out of sorts” and wasn’t responding to directions. Carlson then ran over a curb and started to drive onto a one-way street.

A trooper on assignment at the ferry terminal found Carlson’s car pointed the wrong way at the booth and said she almost struck one of the ferry workers before putting the transmission in park.

The trooper asked Carlson if she were OK.

“Well, I have been drinking,” Carlson told the trooper, according to the officer's report. The trooper asked how much. “Two glasses of wine.”

Further, the trooper wrote that Carlson's eyes were bloodshot and she could smell “an odor of intoxicants” when Carlson spoke.

The trooper had Carlson attempt field sobriety tests. She also showed other signs of intoxication, the trooper wrote.

The trooper then handcuffed Carlson. When asked if she took medication, Carlson twice repeated her daily regimen but said she didn’t know why she took the medicines, according to reports.

Carlson and her daughter said Carlson doesn’t drink. Carlson can’t explain what she may have said — and doubted she admitted to drinking .

Carlson wished the troopers had paid more attention to the Breathalyzer results.

“I haven’t had anything to drink in a long time,” she said. “I don’t drink.”

At about 11:21 a.m. a second trooper administered a breath test that showed no sign of alcohol. That trooper wrote she did not smell alcohol on Carlson but observed that Carlson’s eyes appeared bloodshot and wrote that Carlson repeated that she drank alcohol that morning.

Carlson’s car was impounded with her coat and phone inside. She was taken to Harrison Medical Center in Bremerton so her blood to could be drawn to build a drunken-driving case against her.

While at the hospital, Carlson kept writing the wrong date on a form consenting to the blood test.

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The trooper wrote that she could not find contact information for someone to pick up Carlson on the Edmonds side of the Puget Sound, a little more than 5 miles east of Kingston. She called a number for Carlson that 911 dispatchers gave her but did not include the phone number in her report.

“Carlson was unable to hold a conversation or answer questions completely,” the trooper wrote. “Carlson stated she did not have any kids and did not have a significant other.”

She denied having depression, dementia or Alzheimer's.

“I would give her simple instructions about where to stand or how I was going to handcuff her and she would do something different,” the trooper wrote.

The blood test results, completed in April and which Carlson made available, show no alcohol in her system. In her blood was an antidepressant and a medicine used to treat seizures.

While being booked into jail, the trooper wrote that corrections officers found two pills in Carlson’s purse. The trooper used a website to identify the pills as gabapentin, the anti-seizure medication later detected in Carlson’s blood.

The Kitsap County Sheriff's Office cited privacy laws when declining to turn over documentation of Carlson's stay. By a little after 9 the next morning, Carlson was "released to the street."

What Carlson did for the next 16 hours is unclear. She remembers going to a Navy museum across the street; however, no museum is across the street from the jail and none is nearby.

Wherever she found herself, it kept her out of the cold until workers told her she had to leave.

“The janitors found me and I remember asking if I could stay,” Carlson said. “They said, ‘No,’ and I left so they wouldn’t get into trouble.”

Moore said at one point her mother waited outside the jail for a ride, mistakenly thinking her daughter had been called.

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“She was waiting for me to come pick her up,” Moore said. “If she was thinking clearly, she would not have just sat there.”

Carlson does remember the weather.

“It was really cold and I didn’t have a coat,” she said. The average temperature that day was 37 degrees, according to weather records.

Meanwhile, Moore was beginning to suspect something was amiss.

She received a call that Monday or Tuesday from an aunt in Florida expressing concern she hadn’t been able to reach Carlson the Thursday before. One of Carlson’s three sisters had lung cancer and her condition was deteriorating.

An aunt said she had heard from Carlson when she was in La Push but nothing since.

Moore wondered if her mother had lost her phone or charger. She knew her mother had injured her head previously and had been dealing with health issues, but she remained independent and had traveled by herself to Africa, China and Southeast Asia.

On the night of Dec. 12, 2017, Martha Lingen and her husband returned to their Hansville house and immediately noticed that the lights were on, the coffee was out, Carlson’s toiletries still were there and she hadn’t responded to calls to her cellphone.

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“She would have never left the house that way,” said Lingen, who has been friends with Carlson since college. Lingen found a folder Carlson left behind for her friends, listing recommendations on where to stay the next time they vacationed on the coast.

Carlson, still in Port Orchard, had her purse though not the faculties to ask for help. She made her way down the hill from the jail to the waterfront and caught the foot ferry to Bremerton, about a 2-mile trip over Sinclair Inlet.

Next, she recalls seeing a bus with “Central” on its display. Thinking it would take her someplace centrally located, she got on board. Instead, the bus dropped her off in a desolate part of town.

“There was nothing else nearby,” Carlson said. “Or else I would have walked.”

At almost 1 a.m. Dec. 13, 2017, emergency dispatchers received a call about a woman sitting for about 2½ hours at a bus stop, according to Bremerton Police Department records. An officer found Carlson and reported that he was taking her to a Salvation Army shelter.

Carlson recalls the officer saying he had seen here there about 90 minutes before.

“We need to find you someplace to go,” Carlson recalls the officer saying.

She told him that she lived in Edmonds.

“He said, ‘I can’t bring you over to that side,' and that’s all I remember,” she said.

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Carlson remembers the kindness of shelter staffers, noting that it seemed at capacity but they made room for her. She remembers being covered in baby blankets because no other blankets were available.

“There were people snoring all over the place,” she said.

Then about an hour later, Carlson had a seizure. She became unconscious, according to a 911 call from the shelter.

Over the phone line, the dispatcher could hear Carlson moaning as another seizure started.

“I went to try to shake her to get her off the cot,” the employee told the dispatcher. The dispatcher gave the staff member instructions on how to aid Carlson and said help was on its way.

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When Carlson arrived at a hospital, all she could say was "No," Moore said.

By the next day, Carlson’s sister was fading. Her other sisters were trying desperately to reach her.

Moore started retracing her mother’s steps. She called the places Carlson had stayed in Neah Bay and La Push, confirming that her mother had checked in and out and not left her phone or charger.

“Then I got more concerned,” Moore said.

She didn’t know how to contact Carlson’s friends in Hansville.

Carlson was hospitalized but couldn’t answer questions. Hospital workers could not find anyone to contact, Moore said.

Carlson had not been given an MRI, her daughter said. All hospital staff knew was that she had suffered seizures; doctors had not diagnosed her stroke yet.

By that Friday, Moore started calling anybody she could think of who had contact with Carlson and kept finding the same thing: No one had heard from her. She had missed social engagements; calls were going straight to voicemail.

Lingen told Moore that Carlson had left the house in Hansville in a state of disarray.

“That is not typical of my mom,” Moore said. “We got more concerned.”

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Moore called 911 and had Edmonds police stop by her mother's residence. Nobody was home, the officer said.

Moore called her mother’s primary-care doctor and was put on hold.

“I knew there was something they wanted to tell me,” Moore said. She works in the health-care field so she knows how strict privacy laws can be.

“I understand, but come on,” Moore said.

A short time later the phone rang. Carlson was Harrison Medical Center after being transported from the Salvation Army, a doctor at there said.

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“My mind at this point is whirling,” Moore said. “Why is my mom at a homeless shelter in Bremerton?”

Carlson’s ex-husband still was listed as her emergency contact. Moore said he still cares for her mother and said he never got a call.

Ultimately, he gave doctors the approval to conduct the MRI that resulted in the stroke diagnosis, according to paperwork Moore provided. Moore, who has two young children, made arrangements with her husband, packed a bag and headed toward Bremerton, more than 100 miles and a ferry ride away.

In the meantime, she asked Lingen to go to the hospital. After seeing her friend, Lingen knew something was wrong.

“There was a glaze, a definite glaze,” Lingen said.

While en route, Moore was able to speak with her mother on the phone.

“She was clearly confused about the whole thing,” Moore said.

Moore got to the hospital and didn’t leave her mother’s side until she was discharged Dec. 21, 2017, sleeping in the room with her. Looking though Carlson’s purse, she found the paperwork for her drunken driving arrest.

“She had this crazy story. We couldn’t put it together,” Moore said.

Carlson’s son, who lives in eastern Washington, arrived and helped track down Carlson’s car in an impound lot, paying hundreds of dollars to have it released.

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Later, Moore tried to reconstruct her mother's week. She talked with Carlson’s friends about when they heard from her, when she began sending odd texts and when she missed calls, so Moore estimated that Carlson suffered the stroke Saturday, about two days before she drove to the Kingston ferry terminal.

Carlson recalls standing in the Hansville house for what seemed like long periods.

“I was sick, but I didn’t know why,” she said.

In July, prosecutors declined to file charges against Carlson.

Prosecutor Chad Enright confirmed the blood test found no alcohol and showed the medications in Carlson’s system were within therapeutic levels.

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“Although the substances have the potential to cause impairment, we don’t think we could prove this case to a jury without a reasonable doubt,” Enright said, reading the memo on why prosecutors didn’t file charges against Carlson.

After nine days in the hospital, Carlson went to a rehabilitation facility in Edmonds. During this period, her sister Diane died.

Carlson has hazy memories of the last conversation with her sister, and it has haunted her for the past year that she was unable to be there. Another sister told her that she told Diane she loved her.

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A year later, Carlson's speech and balance have returned and she hasn’t had another seizure.

“I feel comfortable enough to have her watch my kids,” Moore said. “That means she is doing well. We’re so thankful given everything that has happened.”

Carlson, who still lives alone in her Edmonds home, is thankful, too, knowing the outcome could have been worse.

“I’m alive,” she said.

Follow Andrew Binion on Twitter: @a_binion

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This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: She was jailed for drunk driving. Instead she had had a stroke, didn't get help for days