Woman accused of stealing from DFW nursing home patients after requesting urine samples
A woman was arrested this week after police in two Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs say she abused her role as a lab technician working in nursing homes by requesting urine samples from residents before stealing their jewelry.
Laketa Rochelle Calhoun, 47, of Dallas, was arrested Friday on charges of theft out of Garland and exploitation of the elderly out of Lewisville, authorities said. She’s accused of stealing jewelry from two elderly women, first at the Brookdale at Club Hill Living Center in Garland in mid-September, and then last week at Discovery Village at Capital Hills in Lewisville. She allegedly pawned off the items she stole.
Calhoun worked for Medical Lab Partners when she committed the crimes, according to Matt Martucci, a spokesman for the City of Lewisville. The company terminated her on Thursday, he said, when Lewisville police began asking her questions about the robberies.
Calls to Medical Lab Partners were unanswered on Saturday.
Police announced Calhoun’s arrest on Wednesday, which caught the attention of officers in Garland, Martucci said.
They had been looking for her a month, in a case that was strikingly similar.
“So Garland investigators got in touch with our investigators, and we realized we all were looking for the same person,” Martucci told the Star-Telegram over the phone on Saturday.
Police in Carrollton arrested Calhoun on Friday morning and took her to the city jail, he said. When detectives spoke with her, he said, she confessed to the theft of jewelry at the Discovery Village nursing home.
In the first incident, on Sept. 14, Calhoun showed up to an 81-year-old woman’s residence at the Brookdale at Club Hill Living Center in Garland, according to Officer Felicia Jones, a police spokesperson. Wearing scrubs, she told her she was there per her doctor’s request and needed a urine sample, Jones said. The woman stepped into the bathroom.
During this time, Jones said, Calhoun stole the jewelry. The woman noticed the missing items the next day and later reported the theft to police.
Detectives were able to identify Calhoun as the suspect when she returned to the property, Jones said. They later learned she had sold the victim’s jewelry at a pawn shop, making around $1,000.
She then went to Discovery Village at Capital Hills in Lewisville on Oct. 6 because the facility contracted Medical Lab Partners to take COVID tests, according to Martucci. They finished up earlier in the day, he said, and she came back on her own around 7 in the evening posing as a nurse. She told patients she needed to take secondary testing from some of them, he said.
She asked one woman for a urine sample, and while the resident was in the bathroom, stole items of her jewelry, Martucci said.
Stealing from the elderly is already low, he said, but this is even worse than that.
“Doing it under the guise of COVID testing, given that senior citizens are one of the more vulnerable age groups, is just kind of a new low even for this type of crime,” Martucci said.
Jones said these incidents serve as a reminder to everyone to be wary of opening the door to strangers, even if they look official.
“If you know that you’re not expecting someone to come for an appointment, just do not allow them access,” she said. “And if they have issues with you varifying their need to be there, then it may be a red flag.”
This story was originally published October 17, 2020 at 3:32 PM.
