Discovery of Marijuana Closes Day-Care Center : Reseda: Police find an eight-foot-high plant and a loaded rifle. The woman who cared for up to eight children is arrested and loses her license. Her boyfriend is also arrested.

A Reseda day-care center where police found an eight-foot-high marijuana plant and a loaded gun within the reach of children was ordered closed and its operator’s license was suspended Thursday by state officials.

Kim McIntyre, 28, who operated the day-care center in her home in the 19500 block of Vanowen Street was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of cultivating marijuana, a felony. She was later released from the Van Nuys jail after posting $5,000 bail.

Los Angeles police said they intend to seek a charge of child endangerment against McIntyre in addition to the drug charge.

Acting on a complaint from police, the state Department of Social Services which licenses day-care centers, issued a suspension and closure order Thursday, said Fred Miller, deputy director of the community care licensing division.

“She can no longer operate,” Miller said of McIntyre.

McIntyre told police that she was growing the marijuana to help cut down on her live-in boyfriend’s expenses for the drug.

The boyfriend, Michael Cardenas, 30, was not at home when police searched the house Tuesday, but he was arrested Wednesday night on suspicion of cultivating marijuana and was being held in lieu of $5,000 bail.

Police said McIntyre was caring for as many as eight young children in the house. The property was searched after police received an anonymous tip that marijuana was grown there. Detectives could see an eight-foot marijuana plant extending over a back-yard fence and obtained a search warrant, Lt. Gary Rogness said. “It was one very, very large plant,” he said.

The investigators did not realize that the house--which has no sign posted--was also a day-care center until they entered Tuesday afternoon and found several children in McIntyre’s care, Rogness said.

“There were seven or eight kids playing in the back yard by this plant,” he said.

In addition to the marijuana plant, which weighed nine pounds after it was removed, investigators said they found a smaller marijuana plant, about five ounces of the drug inside the house and a loaded rifle in a bedroom accessible to the children.

“She said, ‘I planted it to save money for my boyfriend,’ ” Rogness said of McIntyre. “She said that she didn’t smoke the stuff herself, that she only put it in cookies and brownies.”

Rogness said there was no indication that McIntyre gave marijuana-laced brownies or cookies to children in her care. However, he said investigators will ask prosecutors to charge McIntyre with child endangerment for allowing the children in her care near the drugs and the rifle.

Social services officials said McIntyre received a license earlier this year to care for no more than six children at a time. Her house was inspected before the license was issued, but no drugs were seen, officials said. There had been no complaints about McIntyre before her arrest. Officials said she can request an administrative hearing to appeal her license suspension but cannot operate in the meantime.

McIntyre could not be reached for comment Thursday. When she was arrested Tuesday, police officers had to call parents of the children at the house so they could pick them up. Her own 7-year-old daughter was placed in the care of a friend.

A Tarzana woman whose infant son was cared for by McIntyre earlier this year said Thursday that she stopped leaving her son at the house after twice seeing marijuana plants there.

“The first time, I saw a small plant in the kitchen, and I told her it shouldn’t be there,” D.M. Fischler said. “It was gone the next day. Then about a month later I was looking in her garden and saw a marijuana plant about five feet high. So we pulled our son out. Kim used to dote on my son, but her care went downhill.”

Fischler said she did not make a complaint to authorities about McIntyre because the women were friends and Fischler believed the plants belonged only to McIntyre’s boyfriend.

“I should have made a complaint, but I didn’t,” Fischler said. “It was hard.”

Times staff writer Patricia Klein Lerner contributed to this report.