THE DEATH OF BOBBIE KOLADA, Part 1: 'Did somebody do this to her?'

When Camaryn LaRaut showed up Feb. 20 for his night shift at a group home on Ruth Drive in Medford, the 23-year-old found pools of blood in the living room.

His co-worker, Bobbie Kolada, was crying in pain, slumped over in a bathroom at the other end of the house, unable to lift her head. A resident of the home — an autistic, nonverbal giant of a man in his mid-30s who weighed close to 300 pounds and had a history of violent outbursts — was in the bathroom with her.

A 5-foot-4, 66-year-old grandmother, Kolada had a broken neck and was bleeding profusely from a gash on her forehead. She was fading in and out of consciousness. Until LaRaut arrived, she had been the lone caregiver in the home for hours. 

Bobbie Kolada died March 27 from her injuries. 

She had told family members and doctors that her last memory before blacking out was that the resident in the bathroom with her had become angry when she was helping him connect his computer to Wi-Fi.

A caregiver for Monmouth-based Partnerships in Community Living, Kolada worked for a decade in group homes the company runs for developmentally disabled individuals.

For most of her tenure with PCL, Kolada worked at a nondescript house with a dying lawn near St. Mary’s School in Medford. The man who apparently attacked Kolada that night had previously sent Kolada and other caregivers to the hospital.

Two weeks before the injuries that led to Kolada’s death, the man had thrown Kolada across a room, co-workers said. Family and friends said the Feb. 20 tragedy was just one in a series of violent episodes Kolada had suffered over the past decade at the hands of this client and others with violent behavioral patterns whose care plans require two staff to be on hand to administer certain types of holds or restraints. 

“I’m honestly not sure exactly what happened,” LaRaut told a 911 dispatcher that night, according to a recording of the call obtained by the Rogue Valley Times. “I just came in to work. My co-worker has a big cut on her head and she’s bleeding in the bathroom. Looks like she might have fallen. She says she got a big cut. Can’t lift her head. Can’t really breathe.”

When the dispatcher asked LaRaut whether Kolada fell, Kolada is heard in the background loudly declaring, “No!”

“Are you able to speak freely with me?” the dispatcher asked LaRaut. After a long pause, she asked, “Uh ... did somebody do this to her?”

'Four weeks of hell'

After the attack, Kolada spent five weeks in the hospital on life support, in a brace, unable to move. She was conscious for just three days during that time.

While a police report was not filed initially, Kolada’s daughter, Jessica Bandy, contacted Medford police the last week in April to ask for an investigation. Deputy Chief Darrell Graham confirmed May 4 that an investigation had been opened into Kolada’s death.

Following the 911 call, police were dispatched to escort paramedics, but the incident was treated as a medical call from a potential fall, not a violent attack. Bandy said PCL insisted her mother fell or fainted.

Even before Feb. 20, Bandy worried about her mom’s work environment, she said.

“I personally had told her many times to leave the job. She would have bruises on her arms. She would get punched and thrown and bit. … She’d have bite marks everywhere,” said the daughter.

After Kolada died, Bandy found at least 10 workers' compensation claims in her mother’s files, for injuries at work ranging from serious bites to facial wounds from being head-butted.

“She didn’t say a lot," Bandy noted. "I think she knew we worried.”

Bandy, who lives near Portland, said her mom called “like clockwork” every Sunday and would usually video chat with her two grandchildren.

“She got punched in the face one time by this same patient so badly she couldn’t do Facetime with my children on a Sunday because she didn’t want to scare them.”

Bandy said she could not have imagined her weekly Sunday phone call, the day before her mother was fatally injured, would be their last.

“I woke up Tuesday morning and had nine missed calls from my mother’s phone. … I remember thinking, ‘What is Mom doing?’ But then there was a voicemail from Mom’s roommate and best friend saying what had happened, that she had broken her neck and hit her head at work,” Bandy said.

“The big thing was she had completely shattered her C1 and C2 vertebrae, which the doctor said hold your head to your body. I couldn’t stop thinking about how he said they had been 'shattered.' — Not broken. Shattered.”

Bandy said she immediately got into her car and drove to Medford, where she found her mother at Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center “awake and still talking at that point. She had a serious injury, but she was still there. I thought, 'OK, we can get through this.' I still had my mom.”

Bandy said Kolada was chatty and resolved to recover, but doctors struggled to stabilize her head injury, which they needed to do before her shattered vertebrae could be addressed.

"I got there on a Tuesday and left Friday morning. The whole time I was there, she was still awake but under really close watch by the doctors and nurses,” Bandy recalled.

By Friday, four days after paramedics responded to the call for help on Ruth Drive, Bandy kissed her mother goodbye.

"She was awake the 21st, 22nd and 23rd. On the 23rd, she had been so chatty. Doctors were initially focused on fixing the neck. She still had some bleeding on the brain, but the neck was the primary goal. They had planned surgery for Feb. 27. They were maybe going to try to fuse her vertebrae, so she’d still have pain but likely be able to still move,” she said.

"At that point, she was immobilized. It took four people to adjust her in her bed. I remember saying, ‘Mom, I’m really sad I can’t be here for your surgery. She was like, ‘I’ll be OK. Go be with our babies. It’s OK.”

Bandy returned to the hospital Friday morning.

“She was sleeping. I went to say goodbye before I left. I think the sad part was I was really glad she was sleeping. I remember thinking, ‘Oh, this is good. She’s healing,’” said the daughter.

“It was a sunny day. It had snowed. It was just a beautiful drive home. I listened to her favorite music, and I just had this hope she was going to recover. I got home to see my children, and I was putting my kids down for bed, and I got a call around 8:30 p.m. that night,” Bandy remembers, choking back tears.

“They said, ‘Your mom needs emergency brain surgery because the blood on her brain had become so significant, they had to relieve the pressure. She only had a 50-50 chance of survival, and no chance if they didn’t do something fast. I just said, 'OK, please go save my mom.’”

Kolada never regained consciousness after her surgery.

“She had head surgery on the 24th and never made it to the other surgery. From Feb. 24, until the day she passed, it was all about, 'Is she still in there? Can she recover?’ She had seizures they were managing with medicine and adjusting her other meds, trying to get her to wake up,” Bandy said.

Friends and family sat with Kolada around the clock, playing her favorite music and talking to her.

“She wasn’t responding to pain stimulus. She had survived the surgery to relieve pressure on her brain. ... I think they were shocked she survived, but she wasn’t making progress. She had a feeding tube, a tracheotomy. … They were doing a litany of tests and procedures, trying to get her to a comfortable place, trying to get things stabilized so they could deal with her neck,” Bandy said.

After “four weeks of hell,” Kolada showed no sign of regaining consciousness. "I remember they had to shave her head to put electrodes, to try to stimulate brain activity, and I just thought, 'Mom’s gonna be so mad we shaved her head,’” Bandy recalled.

“But she was kind of frozen. They kept trying to do things for her … she’d open her eyes but would never connect to someone. … Finally, a social worker called and said we’d like to set up a family meeting. And they told us it’s not good. We don’t think she’s coming back.”

Bandy returned immediately to Medford. Kolada was taken off life support Friday, March 24.

“They unplugged everything. I was there with her for two-and-a-half days in her room. I remember they woke me up and said her breathing is really slowed. … I was there with her as she took her last breath.”

Coming Monday — Part 2: Who is investigating the death of Bobbie Kolada?