State Seeks to Revoke License for Child Care : Social services: An 11-month-old girl died and another child nearly choked to death in 1988 while in woman’s care in her Ventura residence.

A state agency is trying to revoke the license of a Ventura day-care home where an infant died and another child nearly choked to death in 1988.

Pamela Komatz, 35, operator of the Komatz Family Day Care Home on Sparrow Street, said she stopped providing day care about a year ago, but her license is still valid and she plans to fight to keep it at a hearing March 5.

“They’re making me out to be a horrible monster,” Komatz said, claiming that most of the allegations are false or exaggerated. “They’re trying to blame me for a kid’s death. If they felt I was choking or strangling kids, why did it take so long?”

The complaint, filed Oct. 30, does not blame Komatz in the death, which a deputy coroner attributed to sudden infant death syndrome. But it accuses Komatz of administering medicine to the child a few hours before she stopped breathing.

Joan M. Phillips, an attorney for the State Department of Social Services, said license revocation is “extremely needed in this case” and blamed the delay in the revocation process on a heavy caseload in her office and difficulties in the investigation.

Child welfare advocates said few cases take two years for resolution, but they agreed that the state agency is understaffed and that delays are not unusual.

“It’s a very long process,” said Beth Manchester, a spokeswoman for the California Child Care Resource and Referral Network. “Basically, it’s a bureaucracy, and there are few staff involved. It ties in with the status of child care in our priorities.”

In the state’s complaint, Komatz is portrayed as a poor housekeeper who force-fed children, taped their fingers together, allowed them to remain in soiled diapers and gave them medicine without parental authorization.

Komatz insisted that she is the victim of a social worker who disliked her from the day they met and was prejudiced against her because she is overweight and uses a cane.

“She looked at me and said, ‘In your condition, I don’t think you ought to be doing day care,’ ” Komatz said.

The complaint says the alleged violations began even before Komatz received her license in June, 1988, to care for up to six children in her house. In April, June and October, 1988, she force-fed children and caused them to choke, the complaint stated.

Komatz acknowledged that she sometimes used a syringe to get balky children to take their medicine, but said she doesn’t consider it a “violation of personal rights,” as the state complaint calls the practice.

“A lot of times kids don’t want their diaper changed, either, but if I didn’t do it the state would say I was negligent,” she said.

In April, 1988, Komatz allegedly taped toys to an infant’s hand with masking tape, the complaint said. Komatz said she did that to help a baby who was having trouble learning how to grasp objects.

“I had the parents’ permission,” she said, “but another parent saw it and turned around and said I was tying kids up with tape.”

In October, 1988, the thick cough syrup she squirted down a 2-year-old girl’s throat apparently blocked her air passage and caused her to stop breathing, Komatz said.

“She passed out in my arms, but I kept working on her with the Heimlich maneuver and CPR,” Komatz said. The resuscitation efforts finally worked, but she still called paramedics and took the child to the emergency room.

The child’s mother, Debbie Neihold, said she believes Komatz saved her daughter’s life, and she plans to testify for her at the revocation hearing.

“If someone was to call me and ask me for a reference, I would say she was a good sitter and a good care provider,” Neihold said.

In November, 1988, an inspector allegedly found the house cluttered and babies with dirty diapers. Komatz denied both charges.

In the last violation cited in the complaint, Komatz is accused of administering medicine to 11-month-old Marina Davis without her parents’ authorization on Dec. 9, 1988.

Komatz told a coroner’s investigator that Marina was getting over the flu and that, at the parents’ request, she mixed some diluted cough syrup with the baby’s milk. Marina drank it about 11:30 a.m. and was fine until about 3:50 p.m., when Komatz said she noticed that the child wasn’t breathing.

Komatz tried cardiopulmonary resuscitation, called the 911 emergency number and rode in the ambulance as paramedics took Marina to Ventura County Medical Center, where the baby was pronounced dead.

Deputy Coroner Ronald O’Halloran, who conducted the autopsy, said Marina died of sudden infant death syndrome and that he found no evidence of any other factor contributing to her death.

Marina’s parents, Martin and Marcia Davis, could not be reached for comment. Komatz said they did not blame her for Marina’s death and had continued to entrust an older child with her for some time afterward.

“Imagine holding a child and trying to breathe life into it,” she said. “It was awful. It tore us all up.”

A spokeswoman for the agency said that if Komatz’s license is revoked, her name will be put on a statewide blacklist that will guard against the possibility of a new license being issued anywhere in California.