Freed Health Care Worker Alters Name, Is Relicensed : Inquiry: A medical technician will have his license revoked after he was identified as the man convicted of giving an infant a near-fatal drug dose in 1985.

A former health care worker who spent more than two years in prison for injecting a Van Nuys baby with a near-fatal drug dose was able to obtain a new state emergency medical technician’s certificate after changing his name and falsifying an application, investigators say.

After his certification, investigators said, Randy Kato--who was known as Randy Powers until he legally changed his name this year--worked as a volunteer at a Valencia hospital until a nurse recognized him and alerted authorities.

This week, as a result of an investigation by Los Angeles police and the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, Kato’s certification will be revoked, said Larry Smith, a health department investigator.

“He falsified his application,” Smith said. “He is going to lose his certification.”

The new certification would not have been granted had the health department known that Kato, 31, of Encino, was decertified as an emergency medical technician after his 1985 convictions for assault with a deadly weapon, the unlawful practice of medicine and child endangerment, Smith said.

“We have a flag on Randy Powers,” Smith said. “He wouldn’t have gotten through. That name would have come up . . . in our files.”

On his application, Kato said he had no criminal convictions and had not been decertified, authorities said.

Although Smith has referred the results of his investigation to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, no felony charges will be filed against Kato, Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert W. Dawson said.

The Kato case is still being evaluated, Dawson said, but even misdemeanor charges are unlikely because the application that Kato completed did not state that falsifying information is a crime.

Kato could not be reached for comment by The Times.

In an interview with authorities last week, Kato acknowledged that he previously had used the name Randy Powers, Smith said. Kato also said he was not working in the health care industry and agreed to accept revocation of his certificate, the investigator said. He said Kato will be officially informed of the revocation in a letter to be mailed this week.

Kato, according to health department records, applied to become an emergency medical technician May 24, just three days after the expiration of his parole from prison. The health department issued him the certificate June 19.

After a highly publicized trial in June, 1985, Kato--then known as Powers--was convicted of injecting a near-fatal dose of lidocaine, an anesthetic, into an 11-month-old girl who was being cared for at his mother’s home.

At the time, Powers was a state-certified emergency medical technician who had worked at several Los Angeles hospitals as a respiratory therapist, giving him access to a variety of drugs, authorities said.

The victim, Sarah Mathews, went into convulsions, and Powers rushed her to a hospital, where he was initially credited with helping save her life. But doctors noticed a needle mark on her leg and a subsequent investigation led to his arrest, authorities said.

Although Powers confessed that he had injected the girl with the drug, which he had stolen from a hospital where he worked, his motive was never determined, investigators said. But at his trial, he testified that he had not injected the girl with the drug and denied that he had confessed. He was sentenced to five years in prison and, authorities said, decertified as an emergency medical technician.

Also in 1985, the district attorney’s office investigated Powers because he had been involved as a respiratory therapist in more than 15 “code blues,” or cardiac and respiratory arrest cases, that ended in patient deaths at Los Angeles hospitals, authorities said.

“The demise of these patients is not what one would have suspected given the nature of their illnesses,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Brian R. Kelberg, head of the office’s medical-legal section.

Four bodies were exhumed and examined, but no evidence of death by drug injection was found. However, Kelberg said, the investigation remains open. He said samples of tissue from the exhumed bodies have been preserved so that they can be retested when better medical technology is available.

“We exhausted all recognized and accepted toxicological studies, but there are certain drugs which can be lethal and . . . which are not presently detectable,” Kelberg said. “We have not closed our investigation because technology may produce additional tests that may be relevant.”

The latest investigation began in August after Los Angeles Police Detective Phil Quartararo was contacted by a nurse at Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital in Valencia.

Quartararo said the nurse called him because he was the investigator in the Mathews case five years earlier. The nurse told Quartararo that she had seen a man she thought was Randy Powers, whom she remembered from media coverage of the 1985 trial, working as a volunteer at the hospital. The nurse said the man was using the name Randy Kato, the detective said.

Quartararo began an investigation and learned that Powers had been released from prison Dec. 27, 1987, and had completed parole May 21. The detective said he learned that on April 19, Powers filed an application with the county clerk’s office requesting that his name be legally changed from Zelaan Escott Powers to Randy Kato.

“I have gone by the name Randy for most of my life,” the application reads. “I prefer the name of Randy Kato. The change is not for the purpose of misleading creditors or any other persons.”

Quartararo said Kato, who was living with his mother, completed a 152-hour EMT instructional program at College of the Canyons in Valencia on May 24 and applied the same day to the health department for a state certificate. He received the certificate, allowing him to provide basic life support, about a month later.

“I was shocked that he could have obtained another certificate after what he had done to that little girl,” said Quartararo, who turned the information over to the health department.

A copy of Kato’s application shows that he checked a box marked “no” following a question asking if the applicant had been convicted of a crime in the previous 10 years. Another question, asking if he ever had been the subject of a decertification disciplinary action, was also checked “no.”

Quartararo said Kato worked as a volunteer at the Valencia hospital during the summer while applying for a full-time emergency medical technician position there. He was let go and his application rejected when he was identified as Powers, the detective said.

Caroline H. Korth, a hospital spokeswoman, cited hospital privacy regulations and declined to comment on the nature of Kato’s duties or how long he was a volunteer. She said he had been placed as a volunteer with the hospital through College of the Canyons’ EMT program.

A college spokeswoman said school policy prevented her from disclosing information about a student.