On the surface, the story at the Terraces of Roseville was that a nurse reportedly stole prescription drugs, police arrested her, and the company let her go.

But behind the scenes, the retirement center is re-evaluating how it operates. Management has fired at least one other staff member and is overhauling the way it handles residents’ medications, a system that had long been abused, say current and former employees.

Problems go back much further than Aug. 18, when Roseville Police arrested Marlene Delp, R.N., after finding drugs prescribed to 28 different people in her apartment at the Terraces.

‘Disgusting’ med room

More than a year ago, Delp became resident services director at the assisted living facility that houses roughly 100 seniors on Sunrise Boulevard. Ever since her arrival, Delp had been treating the Terraces’ drug room like a personal medicine cabinet, according to an ex-employee. Staff and police suspect Delp, 63, was addicted to narcotics.

“I was just in shock at the things I saw, it was disgusting and sad,” said Lisa Strobridge, a medical technician who quit in June 2009 out of frustration with Delp’s management.

Among the things Strobridge saw: medicine went missing constantly, seniors received the wrong pills, and boxes of drugs lingered for months in a side room when they should have been disposed.

Police said Delp gave some residents over-the-counter medication in place of their prescribed painkillers.

Delp, a registered nurse, would order unauthorized drugs and then change records to conceal her actions, Strobridge said. She added that when someone from the night team raised questions, Delp would blame it on the morning team, and vice versa.

“She was making it easy for herself to dip into the meds,” said a current employee, who asked not to be named because the company forbade staff from speaking publicly. The employee said she and her coworkers “had known for a long time what was happening.”

Westmont Living hired Delp after it took on management of the Terraces a year and a half ago. Jackie Budrovic, vice president of residence service for the La Jolla-based company, said it wouldn’t be too hard for workers to steal drugs.

“We do have policies and procedures in place,” Budrovic said of the Terraces’ locked medicine room. But “there are a lot of ways people could go around this.”

For instance, she said, an employee can pick up a prescription without reporting it.

Delp pleaded not guilty to felony burglary, elderly abuse, and drug possession. At a county court in Roseville Wednesday, she told the Press Tribune that she did not want to respond to the allegations. With arms folded, she awaited a case update, sporting a pink pantsuit, white tennis shoes, a shock of white hair, and a perpetual frown.

At other retirement homes, any one of Delp’s alleged lapses could warrant immediate termination. But at the Terraces, Strobridge said, it was more than tolerated.

“It was pathetic how things were swept under the carpet,” she said.

After reportedly lodging complaints that went unanswered, Strobridge said she started noticing files that were tampered with in an effort to make it appear she violated protocol. Someone was trying to get her fired, she said, so ultimately she quit.

Facility has 80-85 percent turnover

The Terraces saw many of its staff, like Strobridge, come and go.

Another former employee said the home underwent 80 to 85 percent turnover when she worked there last year. The woman did not want to be named for fear it would jeopardize her current job.

She said working at the Terraces was so stressful that by the time she quit, she checked into a hospital for high blood pressure and fatigue. But her problems weren’t with Delp - they were with Delp’s boss, Mary Murphy.

As executive director, Murphy came along about the same time as Delp. They were friends who worked closely together, staff say. And they were also fired together.

Budrovic wouldn’t comment on the double dismissals, citing personnel confidentiality.

But the former employee who was hospitalized said staff were “scared to death” of Murphy, who screamed profanities, ignored complaint filings, overworked employees, and at least once berated a resident.

“Mary Murphy was the most twisted, meanest person,” the ex-employee said. Part of the reason Delp got away with theft was that Murphy, and perhaps others, covered for her, sources say.

The Press Tribune was unable to contact Murphy.

Now under new management

Of the 28 people whose prescriptions Delp allegedly stole, police said 19 lived at the Terraces, but were unsure about the other nine. Westmont officials said they didn’t know if those residents knew they’d been duped.

But Strobridge said drugs weren’t the only oversight. When seniors need help, they pull a cord in their room and expect a staffer to arrive within minutes. Strobridge said some took hours, in one case forcing a resident to urinate in bed. The California Social Services Department confirmed that incident, as well as a report last month of missing medications. Roseville Police also received a report in February 2009 that a bottle of narcotics had been stolen from the med room.

Police spokeswoman Dee Dee Gunther said while such reports are normal, an “epidemic” of drug theft targets senior citizens.

“They’re a vulnerable population,” she said.

As supervisors, Delp and Murphy should have dealt with these issues, Strobridge said.

“These are people who had no business working with seniors,” she said, adding it was strange the women also lived at the Terraces. “They were in there for God knows why.”

Many of the points of contention arose after Westmont entered the picture, but it is just the latest reincarnation of a crowded management history. In recent years, the Terraces have been run by Northstar Management and then Oakdale Heights, and have been known as Sign of the Dove, Sunrise Retirement Villa and Oak Creek. The running joke with a nearby pharmacy was that it would just call the Terraces by its address, 707 Sunrise Blvd., because of all the renamings. The changes brought so much tumult at least one nurse quit.

Major overhaul

As for how much responsibility Westmont should shoulder, it’s unclear if the talk of malfeasance made its way to the top of the corporation, which declined to comment on the controversy.

“They didn’t know what was going on, Mary Murphy made sure of that,” said the current employee who requested anonymity.

The employee originally turned down an interview request, but changed her mind because she was so happy to see Westmont “swooping in” to clean up the mess Murphy and Delp left in their wake.

When Delp first came to work at the Terraces, she consolidated power over the medical team of about 12 technicians, the employee said. Now, to get things back to code, she said Westmont is rearranging schedules, ensuring prescriptions get filled on time, and soliciting input from staff, who have regained control of the med room.

“There’s no doubt everything’s going to be rectified,” she said.

Lien Hoang can be reached at lienh@goldcountrymedia.com.