Puzzled By The High Profile

This morning's Bee featured the arrest of a disability pension applicant:

A state worker who applied for a disability pension claiming that anxiety, chronic pain, and fatigue left her virtually unable to leave home or lift a coffee cup to her lips has been arrested after she was videotaped bowling in Elk Grove.

Lisa Trevino-Angelo, 38, was arrested without fanfare and charged by the Sacramento County District Attorney's Office on Aug. 8. She will be arraigned Thursday.

The former Department of Motor Vehicles personnel specialist faces a misdemeanor count of filing a false claim and one count of making false statements and submitting false information to get benefits from the California Public Employees' Retirement System, court documents show.

...Brad Pacheco, a CalPERS spokesman, declined to comment because the case is in the courts but said criminal charges are rare in disability frauds. "Most are handled administratively," Pacheco said.

A CalPERS investigation report stapled to Trevino-Angelo's arrest warrant says she applied for a disability pension in July 2008 after working part time at DMV since 2001.

She started full time at the DMV in 1992. Her health deteriorated, and she stopped working altogether in 2007, the CalPERS report states.

When Trevino-Angelo applied for the disability pension, she complained of chronic, debilitating "head-to-toe pain" that impaired her memory and made it hard for her to focus or work, medical reports show.

When she underwent independent medical evaluations in December and January, the woman told doctors that her fibromyalgia and other ailments left her so weak that she couldn't hold a pen or her baby, cradle a phone to her neck or lift a coffee cup.

She told doctors she felt like "a hostage in her own home" because anxiety and depression made it hard to leave it.

When members of CalPERS investigations unit caught up with Trevino-Angelo in December 2008, she was videotaped bowling and eating pizza at Strikes Bowling Alley in Elk Grove.

They also videotaped her shopping "in high energy fashion" at Target, Old Navy and Barnes & Noble, carrying bags, a CalPERS report states.

CalPERS investigators also videotaped Trevino-Angelo chasing and lifting a toddler in and out of an SUV, and chatting on a cell phone. One video shows her jumping up at a soccer game "to celebrate some achievement by kids on the field," CalPERS report states.

It struck me as strange that this case was getting such a high profile in the newspaper. Is CALPERS getting medieval on all its applicants? Are squads of investigators chasing after every applicant? After all, she had yet to receive any benefits, as far as the article relates. Is CALPERS making an example out of her? The response seems disproportionate.

In my hometown of Albuquerque, the Albuquerque Journal now features an insert where prominent pictures of all your friends and neighbors are displayed after their Drunk driving arrests, but at least they wait for convictions before humiliating everyone in your Rolodex in the local media. I guess CALPERS is different.