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Last updated on Friday, October 12, 2018
(WASHINGTON) - A nurse at Hillside Manor in Washington will lose her license for 90 days for allegedly stealing drugs from two residents of the facility.
According to state records 46-year-old, Cheryl Riester was suspended last week.
Police, say Reister was caught on video on separate occasions taking pills from medication carts, a drawer, and a medication room and swallowing them.
The probable cause states video footage shows Riester on Aug. 5, 2018, at 5:31 p.m., at the nursing home's south hall medical cart. She then opened the second drawer of the medication cart and popped a pill out of a bubble pack, put it in her mouth, took a drink and swallowed.
On Aug. 10, 2018, at 3:52 p.m., video footage showed Riester went into the medication room and when she came out, she threw her head back after taking a drink and swallowing a pill. A third incident occurred less than two hours after the last. This time, at 5:03 p.m., Riester was shown at the north hall medicine cart where she opened the drawer, popped pills and then looked to her right to see if anyone was watching. She then put a pill in her mouth and swallowed. Just 16 minutes later, at 5:19 p.m., Riester was again caught on camera walking down the hall with a pill cup in her hand and appeared to put a pill in her mouth. She's also seen taking a drink and swallowing the pill in the footage.
That same day Riester's coworkers found her to be disoriented, sweating, mumbling, making strange out-of-context statements and falling asleep while attempting to feed residents. Riester was sent home from work that day.
Owner/Administrator Julie Chapman pulled the controlled drug record charts for two residents. Those charts indicated that Riester had given the two residents medication but the medication, hydrocodone, was never actually administered. The hydrocodone, five pills in total, were reported stolen.
In August when questioned by police, Riester said the pills she was taking were her own Zofran. She also denied that the video provided showed her swallowing multiple pills. She then changed her story saying a friend had given her Klonopin and had taken two of those and a Zofran.
In September, Riester was arrested on a warrant on two counts of theft and two counts of exploitation of an endangered adult. She will appear for an initial hearing on March 5, 2019. She is free on $2,500 bond.
This isn't the first time Riester, who was awarded a nursing license in 1996, has temporarily lost her license. The petition for summary suspension shows Riester entered into a monitoring program with the Indiana State Nurses Assistance Program in February of 2010 for opioid abuse. She completed an 18-month recovery monitoring agreement but then in December of 2012, she entered into a new recovery agreement after having a significant history of controlled substance prescription use and demanding oxycodone.
While still under monitoring, she became non-compliant in May of 2015 due to repeated positive urine drug screens and other non-prescribed controlled substances. She was also filling prescriptions in someone else's name for her own use.
Riester's license was reinstated on Feb. 22, 2016, but while still on probation, she was suspected of taking Klonopin from her employer at the time. She also tested positive for hydrocodone and was entered into another 18-month monitoring program; her third since 2010, in January of 2017.
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