2 Toddlers Found Lying in Bed With Dead Mother

A 40-year-old accountant who failed to show up for work was found dead Tuesday morning in bed beside her foster children, after they apparently had spent three days with the body, authorities said.

Barbara Keiper, a 19-year employee at McGaw Inc. in Irvine, was spotted through her bedroom window by her worried boss and Orange County sheriff’s deputies. At her side were her frightened foster daughters, ages 2 and 4, unwashed and hungry.

“It’s sad, for her and for these girls,” said Bruce Lux, Keiper’s supervisor in the finance department of the manufacturer of medical devices. “The children were just scared and didn’t know what to do. You’re just hopeful that they’re young enough that they overcome this.”

An autopsy was underway Tuesday evening to determine the cause of Keiper’s death, but foul play is not suspected, according to Orange County Sheriff’s Lt. Lynn Nehring. Keiper had been battling the flu and perhaps mild pneumonia throughout the holiday season, and one or both of the foster children had been sick with chickenpox, Lux said.

The girls were in “good health” when they were found, Nehring said. The pair were taken to Orangewood Children’s Home, where they had stayed before Keiper took them in last year, according to Lux and authorities. They were the fourth and fifth children she had brought into her home, Lux said.

“She was a single person, and her family was back East, so she didn’t have a network of people to help her support these kids. But she took on the challenge,” said Lux, who said he was inspired in part by Keiper when he and his wife adopted a 4-year-old boy from Orangewood. “She was most definitely a giving person.”

The two girls were not identified Monday, in keeping with confidentiality laws shielding the abandoned, abused or troubled youngsters taken into Orangewood emergency care. The girls were described only as being of Korean descent, and Lux worried that the latest trial in their short lives would be crushing for them.

“It’s pretty traumatic just going through the system for these kids,” he said. “And now with this, it’s got to be very difficult for them.”

It was not clear if the children had eaten, or exactly how long they had been in the home in the 21000 block of Flower Glen in Lake Forest, although investigators estimated that Keiper had been dead three days.

Lux said office workers last heard from Keiper when she called in sick Thursday, and the finance department was closed Friday. She was scheduled to return Monday but did not show up or call in.

Lux left messages at Keiper’s home throughout the day Monday, and when he returned to the office Tuesday and there was still no word, he “knew there was a big problem.” He checked with an employee who housesits for Keiper and with the child-care center that looks after the girls during work hours, and neither had heard from her. Calls to local hospitals also turned up nothing.

Lux rushed to the house, where he met deputies and explained how uncharacteristic it was for the devoted worker and doting mother to leave town on a whim, but the officers told him there was not sufficient cause for them to break in the house. So Lux climbed up to a second-story eve and peered through a window that was partially open.

“I saw her on the bed and right away I was pretty sure she was dead,” he said. “The kids were lying with her in the bed, and I was immediately worried about them.”

The girls, who had been too scared to answer the banging on the front door, “popped up” when they saw people at the window, Lux said. Deputies then broke into the house and paramedics tended to the children, “checking them out, cleaning them up and changing diapers,” Lux said. Two cats in the house were turned over to animal control.

Residents on the quiet cul-de-sac of condominiums said they assumed the newspapers piling up outside the home of the neighbor they knew as “Barb” meant she was away for the weekend. Some neighbors were moved to tears when they heard the news, and a group of them clustered at dusk in front of the victim’s home, which was still decked out with Christmas decorations.

“You could tell she always enjoyed being with the kids,” said Delia Zimmer, who recalled summer afternoons spent at the pool with Keiper and the youngsters she would take in. “She really got attached to them.”

Only one neighbor had any hint that something was wrong. Bong Kim, who speaks little English and has lived on the street only two months, said through a translator that she “heard the girls crying all night” but was unsure whether to intrude.

The news of Keiper’s death and the wrenching experience for her foster children hit hard at the offices of McGaw Inc., where colleagues described her as “always positive” and “a real bright spot” in the hectic workplace.

“She was an excellent worker and, as a boss, very fair,” said Lisa Addington, a payroll employee who was supervised by Keiper for more than two years. “She was soft-spoken and a loving person. She was never in a bad mood.”

Most recently, Keiper had been working with a new computer system at the company, which has 1,500 employees and manufactures intravenous solutions for hospital and home health care. Lux said a steady parade of Keiper’s grieving co-workers visited his office Tuesday to mourn her loss and the ordeal faced by her children.

“It’s been hard to take, especially for people who have kids of their own and try to imagine what these children went through,” he said. “Everyone here is reflecting on how fragile life is.”