Day-Care Service Had Been Cited : O.C. Home Where Toddler Drowned Was Ordered Shut

An unlicensed North Tustin day-care home where a 14-month-old boy died and two other toddlers suffered permanent brain damage after falling into a swimming pool had been ordered twice within the last year to stop caring for children, authorities said Friday.

Officials said the family that operated the baby-sitting service in its Old Foothill Boulevard home was served with a cease-and-desist order in July, 1988, and again in January after social workers responding to complaints found the play area littered with debris and the yard inadequately fenced. But the family continued to care for youngsters.

Couple Questioned

Dianne Edwards, chief of day-care licensing for the county Social Services agency, said she did not seek to have the family prosecuted because it appeared the owners were taking adequate steps to obtain a license and meet county safety regulations.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department said it was questioning the couple who ran the day-care service, Orvel and Diane Brooks, as well as their 24-year-old daughter, Carol, who was in charge of the toddlers when the accident happened Thursday afternoon.

One of the youngsters, Arthur Matthew Griese, 14 months, of Orange, died at Childrens Hospital of Orange County on Friday afternoon, roughly 24 hours after he was pulled from the pool by Orvel Brooks.

Melissa Dianne Polsfoot, 19 months, of Tustin, and Jonathon Derek Weston, 22 months, of North Justin, were hospitalized in critical condition in the intensive-care unit at Western Medical Center in Santa Ana.

Doctors said the two surviving children were attached to life-support systems Friday but that their conditions had stabilized. They were expected to be taken off life supports in the next few days, but doctors said both would suffer irreparable brain damage.

“I think they will (live),” said Dr. Stephen Johnson, director of the pediatrics intensive care unit at Western Medical Center, “but they will live with severe brain damage.”

The children were apparently playing in a fenced-in patio area behind the Brooks’ large country-style home when they opened a gate and fell into the star-shaped pool just beyond the fence.

Couple Not at Home

Diane Brooks said the accident happened while she and her husband were not at home and the children had been left with their daughter.

“My daughter came into the house because one of them (another child) needed changing,” she said. “She was only gone a minute. While she was changing the baby, the other kids somehow got through the gate.”

She said her husband then arrived home minutes later, spotted the children in the pool and went in after them, trying desperately to revive at least one with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Doctors speculated the children had been in the water for between 5 and 15 minutes.

Brooks said she had no idea how the toddlers had opened a gate to reach the pool, which was dirty and filled with murky green algae at the time of the accident.

“We don’t know,” she said. “I know that the gate was securely latched. I can’t tell you how upset we are. I’ve lost 5 pounds since this happened. I know that we’re going to take a beating in the press, but we do a good job taking care of children. We’ve never had anything like this.

“It’s just one of those things that happened.”

Brooks said she was in the process of obtaining a license, “but you have to take a TB test. I haven’t done that yet. I’ve always meant to get around to it, but there are so many who operate without it, it never really seemed that important.”

She blamed the county for the accident, saying that in complying with regulations to keep the children away from an old abandoned car and a woodpile, she had erected a second fenced-in area attached to her patio about 6 weeks ago, after she had received the second cease-and-desist order. It was from that area that the children went through the gate and gained access to the pool.

County Blamed

“Social Services came out here about a month or a month and a half ago,” she said. “We had the kids in the fenced-off area by the woodpile. But she (the social worker) said no, it wasn’t safe with the woodpile there. She said that Social Services required a fence for a back-yard patio. So I immediately put up a 6-foot high chain-link fence (adjacent to the original play area). She said it had to be 5 feet high. I made sure it was 6 feet, just to be safe.

“I’m mad. I guess I’m not really mad. I’m irritated. If Social Services had left us alone, those kids would be safe today” because they would have been cared for in the original fenced-in area where the woodpile is located.

For safety reasons, Brooks said, the gate to the new area “had to have a latch you could get in and out of more easily.”

She said she did not blame her daughter. “When a baby needs changing, you have to go in and change it,” she said.

Edwards, director of day-care licensing, said that social workers had received two separate complaints about the Brookses’ baby-sitting operation, one in July, 1988, and the other in January. In both reports, Edwards said, “the issue of the pool and the fencing were discussed with Mrs. Brooks and the requirements for licensing regarding homes with a pool were thoroughly reviewed.”

Complaint Followed Warning

According to Edwards, the first complaint followed a neighbor’s warning that children were playing unsupervised in the back yard in an area strewn with junk and at least two abandoned cars.

Nancy Reed, the next-door neighbor, said she called Social Services “because I thought the situation was dangerous.”

She said the back yard where the children were kept, which was fenced off from the pool, was littered with old lawn mowers, logs and rakes. It was in this area that the woodpile and old car were located. Reed and her husband, Robert, said the Brooks family usually cared for five or six children at one time, but it could not be immediately determined how many children were at the home at the time of the accident.

Robert Reed said a Social Services worker had visited his home last October to discuss the Brookses’ operation and that he had told the caseworker of his concern.

In retrospect, he said, he wished he had been more insistent.

“I was sort of blaming myself for not calling the Department of Social Services every day to put a stop to it,” he said. “When (the accident) happened, it hurt.”

Edwards said the second complaint in January came in an anonymous letter “from a parent who said they were seeking child care for their own infant and had gone to interview the family. They wrote us to say that they felt that it was an unlicensed home . . . the pool area was specifically mentioned” as being a hazard.

Edwards said social workers followed up on both complaints, visited the Brooks home on each occasion and issued the orders for them to stop caring for children. She said the issues were inadequate fencing and the littered yard.

“There was fencing there, but it appears the fencing was inadequate. The fencing did not meet the standards,” in part because it allowed the children to play around the woodpile and old car, she said.

“In the first visit, the notations (on the report) are such that we advised her that the pool was inadequately fenced. It was partially fenced and additional fencing requirements were discussed with her. She indicated her understanding of the licensing requirements and said she would take care of the fencing requirements.”

Part of the fencing requirements, she said, is that any gate be constructed so a child cannot open it, “so when you go through you don’t have to manually lock it. It automatically closes and latches so a child can’t open it. The regulations are pretty specific regarding that.”

After the second order was issued, Edwards said, the county was assured by the family that it was taking steps to obtain a license and comply with regulations. She said the only recourse to enforce the cease-and-desist orders was to seek prosecution from the district attorney’s office, but this was not done.

“We had not done that at this point,” Edwards said. “Generally, if the individual is taking steps to comply with the application process, we try to work with them in that regard. We had not had complaints from parents in the home. We had two complaints and based on the January visit, it appears from the case record that she had actually started the licensing process.”

Edwards said that Brooks in fact had attended an orientation session on licensing last August, and she filed initial but incomplete papers with the Social Services agency earlier this year to operate a “small family home” day-care center for not more than six children.

Edwards said her office receives about 600 complaints a year regarding day care in general and that two-thirds of those involve unlicensed centers.

“Many of these, when we start working with the family, and especially when we issue a cease-and-desist order, it is not uncommon to be deluged with calls from the parents saying don’t shut it down because they are doing a good job taking care of their children.”

Times staff writers Lynn Smith and Kim Jackson contributed to this story.