LOCAL
Wednesday, March 6, 2019
herMIsTOnheraLd.cOM • A3
Major drug bust puts strain on local foster care system
By JAYATI RAMAKRISHNAN
STAFF WRITER
Operation Wildfire, a January
drug bust by the Blue Mountain
Enforcement Narcotics Team, put
65 people from Umatilla, Morrow,
Union and Gilliam counties behind
bars. It also sent a wave of children
into the foster care system.
According to Court Appointed
Special Advocates, 38 children
entered foster care in Umatilla
County in January. At least eight
families were involved with the
drug bust, said Diane Shockman,
the CASA volunteer coordinator
for western Umatilla County.
“The reason kids were in danger
is that non-safe people were fre-
quenting their home, or they were
in the car while mom or dad was
selling drugs, reasons like that,”
said Shockman.
Jesus Rome, the director of
CASA, said the bust has had a
trickle-down effect on families,
with many kids taken away from
home due to neglect. In his seven
years at CASA, he said he’s never
seen that many children come into
foster care in a single month.
CASA works with a variety
of organizations — including the
Department of Human Services
and the courts — as liaisons for
foster care children.
“One day, we had six shelter
hearings in Hermiston, and two
in Pendleton,” he said. “Some had
one child, but most had more than
one.”
staff photo by Kathy aney
The Pendleton Convention Center served as a command and processing center for Operation Wildfire, a significant
BENT drug bust that seized large amounts of drugs and involved at least 65 arrests.
Shelter hearings, which are
court proceedings that happen
when a child is removed from
their home, must be held within
24 hours of a child being removed.
Because there was such a large
influx of children coming into the
system, Shockman said many peo-
ple were rushing to make sure chil-
dren had places to go.
“Caseworkers were scrambling
to find homes and places to put
them, the legal teams were pro-
cessing paperwork, Judge Temple
was having hearings,” she said.
Shockman said many of the
children’s relatives stepped in and
DHS was able to do emergency
certifications so the children could
stay with them.
Once a child is in foster care,
there must be a discovery hear-
ing within 30 days, and within 60
days they must have a jurisdic-
tional hearing. At that time, the
court also orders disposition, or
determines where a child will be
placed, as well as services for par-
ent and child and visitation with
family. Within the next six months,
the court will have a permanency
hearing to determine what the next
step should be for the child.
Though they’ve been removed
from their homes, Shockman said
the goal is almost always to reunite
children with their parents.
“It’s so variable,” she said, not-
ing that sometimes, a parent can’t
have contact with their child. But
even if they’re incarcerated, she
said, they make an effort to let the
child visit.
“We really bend over backward
to reunite kids with their parents,”
she said. “It’s in the best interest of
the kids. But the kids’ timeline is so
short — we can’t always wait for
Hermiston family celebrates Rare Disease Day
By JADE MCDOWELL
NEWS EDITOR
Jacenda
McKen-
zie-Richter is a zebra.
It’s a common meta-
phor in the medical world
— when people hear hoof-
beats they usually picture
a horse, but they could be
hearing a zebra. Likewise,
when medical symptoms
appear, physicians often
assume they come from a
common ailment instead of
a rare disease.
Jacenda, 11, of Herm-
iston, has two rare dis-
eases: mastocytosis and
Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.
Each year on Feb. 28, offi-
cially known as Rare Dis-
ease Day, she and her fam-
ily make T-shirts with
drawings of zebras to edu-
cate people about rare dis-
eases. On Thursday her
pink shirt featured a zebra
with a unicorn horn.
Though she’s not often
asked, Jacenda and her
family take any opportunity
they can get to talk about
the disease.
“My really good friend
Kirsten knows, and a cou-
ple of other good friends,”
she said.
She said her teach-
ers also know about her
conditions.
When someone has an
allergic reaction to a bee
sting or food, their body
produces an abundance of
histamine, causing swell-
ing, hives and other symp-
toms. Jacenda’s mother
Dena Hill said mastocyto-
sis causes Jacenda’s body
to produce too much hista-
mine every day. Even with
taking a strong antihista-
mine daily, her skin some-
times shows reactions,
and twice she has sponta-
neously gone into anaphy-
lactic shock.
“She didn’t need a bee
sting or anything,” Hill
said.
About 1 in 10,000 peo-
ple have mastocytosis,
according to the National
staff photo by Jade Mcdowell
Dena Hill, left, and Jacenda McKenzie-Richter show off
their zebra-unicorn shirts representing Jacenda’s two rare
diseases.
Institutes of Health, but
only 5 percent of them have
the cutaneous form Jacenda
has.
Her problems started
right after she was born,
when Hill started noticing
odd bumps, welts and hives
that would pop up then go
away quickly. She kept
bringing it up to doctors,
who dismissed it.
“I was a single mom,
19, and I was never around
babies so I didn’t know
much,” she said. “But
something didn’t seem
right.”
One day when Jacenda
was about a month old, Hill
brought her to the emer-
gency room with a blood-
filled blister the size of a
quarter on her wrist.
“I had a nurse basically
accuse me of child abuse,
saying I must have burned
her with an iron,” Hill said.
The accusation stung,
and Hill worried child pro-
tective services would be
called. She didn’t know
it at the time, but it’s not
uncommon for parents of
children with rare diseases
to be accused of child abuse
when their child presents
with unexplained bruises,
broken bones or other
symptoms.
Luckily for Hill, Jacen-
da’s pediatrician was sup-
portive and started con-
ducting research that finally
ended with a proper diag-
nosis of cutaneous maso-
cytosis a couple of months
later.
When Jacenda was five,
her doctors started looking
into the fact that she walked
“floppy,” Hill said. After a
few years of incorrect diag-
noses she was finally genet-
ically tested for and diag-
nosed with Ehlers-Danlos,
an inherited connective
tissue disorder that mani-
fests in a variety of ways,
from thin skin to congeni-
tal hip dislocation. Jacenda
has experienced heart prob-
lems, leg pain and ultra-soft
skin.
Hill said having a serious
illness or chronic disease is
always difficult. But when
the illness is something few
people have heard of it adds
an extra layer of stress.
Doctors
might
not
believe patients, or might
misdiagnose them and give
them the wrong treatment.
Some people with rare dis-
eases suffer for years before
finding a correct diagnosis,
and sometimes there aren’t
very effective treatments
available because phar-
maceutical companies and
government entities would
rather fund research for
more common ailments.
“It’s hard,” Hill said.
“You can feel really alone.
Something like breast can-
cer, it’s horrible, but you’re
not as alone. With a rare
disease, you don’t see it on
TV, you don’t see fundrais-
ers for it. You’re lucky if
you ever even get to meet
someone else with it.”
She
doesn’t
want
Jacenda to feel like her diag-
noses are something to be
ashamed of, so every year
they celebrate Rare Disease
Day on the last day of Feb-
ruary. They make T-shirts
with facts about masto-
cytosis and Ehlers-Dan-
los, plan a fun activity and
let Jacenda pick out what
they’re eating that day.
On Thursday, they cel-
ebrated the snow day with
some sledding. Jacenda
said she was excited for
dinner:
parents to get their act together.”
She added that reunification is
not a fast process. They need to
be sure parents are serious before
reuniting them with their children.
Charlie Clupny, a longtime
CASA, said reunification is not
always possible.
“I’m on a case where the kids
were on a reunification track —
then they were on a reunification/
adoption track, and now they’re on
an adoption track,” he said.
Clupny said in that case, the
parent did not commit a violent
crime. She had been doing well
and on track to get her children
back, but then had a death in her
family that affected her so badly,
it set her back. The parent was not
actively abusing her children, but
was neglecting them.
“Which most of the cases are,”
Rome said. “Unfortunately with
drugs, people use and sell for lots
of different reasons. It’s great that
the police departments were proac-
tive in getting them off the street.
But the ripple effect of people that
get caught in the system, like this
mom — they were doing so well
but then they relapse again.”
The children in foster care as
a result of Operation Wildfire
have not yet been paired up with
CASAs, as there are not enough to
serve every child right now.
“It’s a struggle to recruit men
and minorities,” he said. But he
said the program has grown, and
now has about 40 volunteers serv-
ing nearly 90 kids.
Late snow extends
warming station season
By HERMISTON HERALD
A late round of snow for
Umatilla County is extend-
ing the Hermiston Warming
Station’s season into March.
The warming station’s
board had originally planned
to close the emergency shel-
ter last Friday, but will keep
it open until at least March
14. Board chair Teesie Hill
said they may provide ser-
vices even longer if it looks
like Hermiston will continue
to see below-freezing tem-
peratures or snow into late
March.
Hill said the warming
station has seen 16 or more
people on a regular basis the
last few weeks.
“The other night we had
18 people,” she said. “That’s
a record for us.”
She said she thought they
would be able to get enough
volunteers to continue into
March, but the warming sta-
tion is running out of sup-
plies and needs donations.
The full list can be found on
the Hermiston Warming Sta-
tion Facebook page, but it
includes laundry and clean-
ing supplies, hygiene items,
socks, gloves, hand warmers
and hot drinks, such as cof-
fee and apple cider.
Donations
can
be
dropped off at the warming
station, 1075 South High-
way 395, on Wednesdays
from 3-6 p.m. and Saturdays
from 1-3 p.m. or by appoint-
ment (call 360-508-4523).
People are asked not to drop
off donations in the evenings
to protect the confidentiality
of guests.
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541-966-1850
Pendleton, OR I-84 - Exit 216
PET OF THE
W EEK
Patch came into rescue after Pet Rescue
contacted us about a dog brought into the
shelter with a broken leg. He needed surgery
for a double fractured leg and now has a
fixator on his leg for 8 weeks. He is approx.
a year old. Very sweet, playful little guy.
Loves both cats and dogs. He will be up for
adoption once healed. If you are interested
in Patch please fill out an application. We can
arrange for meets during his recovery time.
Mark Sargent, DVM • Brent Barton, DVM
Eugenio Mannucci, DVM, cVMA • Jana von Borstel, DVM, cVMA
Small and Large Animal Care
Mon: 8-6
Tue - Fri: 8-5
Sat: 8-12
Emergency Service
541.567.1138
80489 Hwy 395 N
Hermiston
www.oregontrailvet.com
MEET
PATCH!
PLACE
YOUR AD
HERE!
Contact Audra at
541.564.4538
Today!
If interested in him please go to
fuzzballrescue.com and fill out an application.
If you aren’t able to adopt, but would like to donate you can through PayPal by going to fuzzballrescue.com,
or you can mail in donations to Fuzz Ball Animal Rescue PO Box 580 Hermiston, OR 97838