SThe Sun/Sunday, February 16, 2014 STATE NEWS www.sunnewspapers.net WIRE Page 3 Hospice worker: I was fired after getting cancer WEST PALM BEACH (AP) Hospice of Palm Beach County raised its CEO's pay 30 percent to $710,537 the same year a mother of three said the organization fired her because she could work only 30 hours a week while fighting breast cancer a situation the hospice's founder called "outrageous." The pay was revealed in financial records for 2011 requested by The Palm Beach Post last year but not released until 2014 by the nonprofit hospice. Its founding mission: to provide palliative care for people with terminal illnesses including cancer. Mitsy Tucker said she was a secretary coordi- nating care for patients at home when she was stunned to receive a termination letter saying her last day would be Dec. 19, 2011. In her own letter, Tucker pleaded with CEO Dave Fielding to help her understand why she was fired six days before Christmas. "The termination hap- pened during one of the most difficult times of my life, a very challenging time frame where I was being treated for breast cancer," Tucker wrote. She said she could work only 30 hours a week after a leave for a double mastectomy because she needed continuing treatment, including chemotherapy. A termina- tion letter reminded her, "Failure to return to full duty after completion of Family Medical Leave may result in termination of the employee's employment." Mitsy Tucker says she needed to work only 30 hours a week to get treatment for her breast cancer. Hospice officials declined to confirm or dispute Tucker's account, but the founder of the organization found it troubling. "It is outrageous to treat your own employee like that," said Stella Monchick-West, who founded Hospice of Palm Beach County in her own home in 1978 and is now retired. "That's uncon- scionable. Hospice of Palm Beach County shows such compassion to their patients and their families. Why wouldn't they show that compassion to their employees?" Fielding received more than $288,000 in bonuses, including an "incentive bonus" based on the organization's financial results, a $100,000 "reten- tion bonus" and $65,000 in "deferred compensation" to boost his 2011 pay, records show. His bonuses alone amounted to more than 10 times what Tucker said was her annual pay. A statement from Hospice of Palm Beach County said, "Positive employee relations are the cornerstone of our organi- zation, and out of respect for the individual's privacy we cannot comment on a specific case. Our com- mitment to fair treatment for all employees is well known in the community." As for executive com- pensation, "plans are determined by third-party compensation consultants on an annual basis, and administered by the compensation committee of our local board of direc- tors," the statement said. "Executive compensation is set within standard industry guidelines." A little more than two years after her firing, Tucker, 48, said she is fighting to remain can- cer-free but has been unable to get a new job in the meantime. She said she is doing the best she can on Medicaid and Social Security benefits but cannot afford a breast reconstruction procedure, for example. Tucker said she was bom in Jamaica and moved to Palm Beach County in 1975. After losing her job, she said she was unable to afford the premiums under a program to extend her health insurance. Her children rallied to help her as best they could, she said. She said she has two grown daughters, one recently named a teacher of the year at her elemen- tary school, and a son who is an Iraq War veteran in the Army Reserves. She has three grandchildren. "He did not even respond," Tucker recalled at her Riviera Beach home about the letter to the CEO. "That, most of all, was my biggest disappointment." In 2012, The Post reported the hospice let go of nearly 5 percent of its workforce, more than 30 employees, around Memorial Day, even as executive pay was rising to average more than $300,000 apiece among the top 12 officers, according to the latest records then available. A hospice statement blamed in part a "challenging economy," though officials said they later hired more than 50 employees. Company officials acknowledged at the time that executive compensa- tion included bonuses tied partly to the organization's "gross margin" meaning money left after expenses - but denied that exec- utives had incentives to increase their paychecks by firing workers. By Tucker's account, she received a good performance review before a devastating diagnosis of breast cancer in 2011, which forced her to take a leave while she underwent a double mastectomy. She never dreamed she would be fired because she could not work a full 40 hours a week on her return, she said. She wrote to Fielding that she considered the hospice "my second family." The hospice told The Post last year that an IRS Form 990 document showing executive compensation for 2011 was not available. It was finally turned over in January along with records showing Fielding's 2012 compensation falling to $355,980. Fielding's 2011 compen- sation jumped by almost a third to more than $710,000 from $545,897 in 2010, which was itself a 16 percent increase over 2009, according to IRS filings. His com- pensation dropped to just over $350,000 in 2012. Beginning in June 2012, Post articles called attention to executive pay amid layoffs. Total bonus and incen- tive pay to top executives fell sharply from more than $600,000 in 2011 to less than $70,000 in 2012, according to IRS filings. At the time of the 2012 Memorial Day firings, volunteer hospice board chairman John Marino defended executive pay as appropriate to "attract and retain the best possible people." Preservation board moves to protect uncovered site MIAMI (AP) -Miami's historic preservation board has rejected a developer's plan to carve out and display a remnant of a major prehistoric Native American village. The board voted Friday to ask MDM Group to revise its plan to better protect and showcase the remnants. The remnants include posthole patterns believed to have been the foundations of a 2,000-year-old Tequesta village as well as parts of a SeminoleWar-era U.S. Army fort and Henry Flagler's Royal Palm Hotel. An attorney for the developer tells The Miami Herald that MDM Group will appeal the board's decision to the Miami city commission. Archaeologists and preservationists want the developer to redesign a commercial and hotel project to accommodate the findings. About two dozen people, including members of Native American groups and descendants of Miami pi- oneers, spoke at the board meeting Friday, but none supported the developer's plan to carve out a section of the limestone contain- ing the circle formations and placing it on display in a public plaza. Several board members said the archaeological findings add value and commercial appeal to MDM Group's project. "How cool is this?" said board member Hugh Ryan. "We should be excited about this. It's an exciting opportunity. It could be an international landmark" Representatives for the developer have said a redesign could imperil the project's viability. The MDM Group's attorney, Eugene Steams, argued Friday that the postholes are insignificant by themselves and not worth said the site is "highly said its archaeological plan to remove one of the preserving, significant" and could value is zero once it's been circular posthole patterns An archaeologist qualify for inclusion on the excavated, stripped of from the bedrock and in- consulting for MDM honorary National Register artifacts and analyzed, and stall it in an adjacent plaza Group, Christopher Dore, of Historic Places. But he he called the developer's "adequate mitigation." I STATE NEWS BRIEFS Forecasters add 1 subtropical storm to 2013 tally MIAMI (AP) -The National Hurricane Center has added one subtropical storm to last year's tally of tropical weather. Forecasters said this week that as part of a routine review of data from the 2013 Atlantic hurricane season, a short-lived low that developed south of the Azores in early December was determined to be a subtropical storm. The December storm was not given a name. That brings the tally for last year's six-month hurricane season to 14 tropical and subtropical storms. Two of those storms, Humberto and Ingrid, became hurri- canes. Just one storm -Tropical Storm Andrea - made landfall in the United States. 1 dead, 5 injured after mobile home fire RUSKIN (AP) - Authorities say a 4-year- old girl has died and five other people are injured after a fire in a Tampa Bay-area mobile home. Hillsborough County Fire Rescue tells The I.1 np.1 lit n i iii i .. Ollr. i dhr.d1 111 1h,. Ilr late Friday in Ruskin. Spokesman Chip Shields says three other children and a man and a woman were taken to hospitals with injuries. Shields says firefighters' efforts to extinguish the fire were hampered by live power lines that were brought down by the blaze. The cause of the fire remains under investigation. Push to get young adults to buy health insurance MIAMI (AP) - Advocacy groups are planning a major push to educate uninsured young adults about their health insurance options under the Affordable Care Act. Dozens of organi- zations in Florida and around the country were participating in National Youth Enrollment Day on Saturday. Events were held in Orlando, Tampa and Jacksonville to target so-called "young invincibles." U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius was scheduled to speak at an enrollment event in North Miami. Insurers are counting on "young invincibles" to offset the costs of .... IVl 11n0 ,,I.l. 1il- kri 1 lll l Ih .