(Press Release)  James A. McDevitt, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Washington, announced that Carolyn Sturgeon, age 60, of Malden, Washington, pleaded guilty to one count of an Indictment charging her with Tampering with a Consumer Product, in violation of Title 18, United States Code Section 1365(a).

Former Temporary Postmaster Carolyn Sturgeon acknowledged that on July 13, 2005, she was working at the Malden, Washington, Post Office. That day, she opened a certified mail packet that had been sent from the St. John’s Pharmacy in St. John, Washington, to a Postal customer who is suffering from spinal cord tumors. The Postal customer takes Oxycodone according to a daily dosage regime to help relieve the constant, severe pain caused by the spinal cord tumors. The mail packet contained a prescription bottle holding 84 tablets of Oxycodone, which the customer had been prescribed. Sturgeon removed the Oxycodone tablets from the prescription bottle and replaced them with 84 tablet of Synthroid, a thyroid medication that Sturgeon had been prescribed. Sturgeon placed the prescription bottle now holding the Synthroid tablets back into the certified mail packet and, thereafter, caused the packet to be delivered to the Postal customer.

Later that day, the Postal customer received the mail packet and subsequently placed two of the Synthroid tablets in her mouth according to the dosage regimen for Oxycodone. The customer, however, removed the tablets before swallowing them and, out of caution, called the St. John=s Pharmacy. The Pharmacy, which had complied with and followed all proper procedures, confirmed the description of the tablets as being Synthroid, a medication neither stored nor dispensed by the Pharmacy.

If the Postal customer had ingested the Synthroid tablets according to the daily dosage regime for Oxycodone, the customer could have suffered a cardiac arrest.

source: U.S. Attorney’s Office