He’s a New Man, but He’s Still Paying for an Old Mistake

It began with a darts match nine years ago. In those days, Dan Severson hit the pubs almost nightly, knocking back beers while either practicing or competing with his five-man darts team.

After a match in April of 1987 in Newhall, Severson, then 25, was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol. The Highway Patrol report indicates he registered a .11 on a breath test, just above what then was the legal limit of .10. The district attorney filed the lesser charge of reckless driving, alcohol involved, but after Severson complied with court-ordered terms, the charge was reduced further to reckless driving.

That is the only blemish on Severson’s record, but it’s been enough for the state of California to thwart his clear-cut entry into a field for which he’s trained and, by all accounts, eminently qualified.

If you’re like me, you’ll find yourself asking why.

Now 34, Severson is married to a CHP officer and has a 7-year-old son. But it was the death of his 13-month-old daughter, Taylor, in 1992 that led him to the field of respiratory care.

She was born with viral meningitis and encephalitis. Doctors originally believed she would survive but told the Seversons she would have respiratory problems all her life, Severson told me. “She had five bouts of aspiration pneumonia,” he says. “After the second one, they said she was going to have lung damage from it, and the next day I went down to Orange Coast College and enrolled in their respiratory care program.”

Respiratory care therapists are not doctors, but they assist them--usually in hospital settings. Of the therapists’ many tasks, the basic one is to monitor and maintain a patient’s airway. They provide a variety of diagnostic and treatment procedures for people with pulmonary problems.

Severson finally got into the program in 1993. By then settled and in his early 30s, he did well, making the dean’s list. “I realized it was exactly the field I had been looking for,” he says. When he graduated in May of last year, he had a tentative job offer at UC Irvine Medical Center, where he had interned. All he needed was a license given by the state Respiratory Care Board.

The board denied him, citing his 1987 arrest. In various official correspondences from the board, which Severson showed me, that is the only reason given for denial. Under statute, the board is entitled to deny a license for a drinking-related offense, just as it can suspend a current practitioner for the offense.

Even so, I asked Elberta Portman, an enforcement coordinator for the Respiratory Care Board, if license denial weren’t too severe for an 9-year-old offense, especially since it was isolated and relatively minor. She wouldn’t address that directly, but said the board reviews each case individually and isn’t bound by statute of limitations considerations.

“Our mandate is to make sure the practice of respiratory care is safe for patients in California,” Portman said, “and to do that we want to ensure that only qualified individuals are allowed to have free and clear licenses.”

Part of Severson’s court-ordered penance in 1987 was the standard requirement to attend alcohol-education programs and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. “I learned a lot about myself and about my abusive drinking habits I picked up in the Navy,” Severson told me last week in his Garden Grove home. “We all grow and change. I subsequently became a father and married and everything else. Now, for me, I would say I was drinking to excess then, because now I drink maybe two beers a month, at most.”

What infuriates him, however, is the care board’s ongoing insistence that he has a drinking problem, although it provided no evidence. It’s maddeningly ironic, Severson says, because he agrees wholeheartedly that the board must weed out problem drinkers or drug abusers.

“In my field, it’s a very simple matter: If you make a mistake, your patient can die. If they’ve got chronic pulmonary obstruction disease, and you give them four times the correct amount of oxygen concentration, they’re going to stop breathing.”

He’s also angered that the board doesn’t seem interested in more current observations, such as the ones expressed in the following letter written to the board last year:

“I was recently made aware that [Severson’s] permit is being withheld based on an 8-year-old reckless driving conviction. This is very distressing, especially considering this particular individual. Daniel has been an exemplary student in all aspects of academics, clinical and personal commitment. He is president of the Respiratory Care Club and was the primary driving force in development of a tutorial assistance for other students in the class. He has represented the [program] on the advisory committee and on other campus-based meetings over the past two years. All of this was accomplished while working part-time at nights as a court security guard and being in the Naval reserve.”

The letter was from Daniel Adelman, the director of the respiratory care program at Orange Coast College.

Unable to practice without a license, Severson negotiated for a probationary license. He showed me the board’s original list of “stipulations” that, among other things, required that he submit to random drug testing, totally abstain from “the possession or use of alcohol,” and attend a substance-abuse recovery program.

When Severson told the board he couldn’t get into a program unless he demonstrated he had a problem, it dropped the requirement. The board also modified terms so that drug testing and sanctions against alcohol were limited to job-site situations. Still believing the terms are unfair, Severson agreed to them last month, but only because he feared further delays would jeopardize his career.

As it is, he says, the probationary license is like a “stop sign” to prospective employers in metropolitan areas where there is competition for openings.

“I’ve put in applications to 28 hospitals, including at least 12 that had openings. I’ve been called for one interview,” he says. “I’m being denied the privilege of performing in a field that saves lives, which is something I’ve dedicated my life to. It’s preventing me from providing better for my wife and child. They’re accusing me of having a condition that I don’t have. I believe very strongly in the Ten Commandments, and ‘Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor,’ as far as I know, still applies to government agencies, if not more so, than with private citizens. They have no right to tell me I have a problem I don’t have.”

I’d like to cut the board some slack, but their treatment of Severson verges on an indefensible abuse of power.

As a Californian, I want the state to protect me.

But not from people like Dan Severson.

Dana Parsons’ columns appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.