It appears 2014 put the final chapter on the Paul Cardwell saga at Powell Valley Healthcare.

This story has been, in many ways, one of the most personal of my career, and one of the most painful to watch.

While some say the Powell Valley Healthcare board was negligent when it hired Cardwell, I believe the only thing the board is guilty of in this situation is trusting someone who should have been trustworthy, but was not.

The beginning

I watched the whole process, from the time former CEO Rod Barton, a trusted leader at Powell Valley Healthcare for 13 years, announced his resignation in June 2010.

All candidates to fill the position, including Cardwell, passed court and credit checks as well as searches of Internet and newspaper records by Brim Healthcare (now HealthTech Management Services), which provided management services to Powell Valley Healthcare.

During interviews, Cardwell was the most charismatic and energetic candidate, and the one who appeared to “click” with board members during his interview. He seemed very capable of taking the organization to the next level.

The board chose Cardwell for the position, then each member of the PVHC leadership team contacted his or her counterpart at White County Memorial Hospital in Indiana. Each came back with a glowing report about Cardwell.

The Tribune did its own research after Cardwell was hired and found nothing negative — in fact, quite the opposite. A report on Cardwell’s last day at White County Memorial, called it “the end of an era.”

“Now, with the building of the new hospital, he’s leaving the hospital care in White County in good shape,” one county commissioner stated in the story. “We’ll miss Paul.”

Cardwell signed a contract to begin his employment at Powell Valley Healthcare in October 2010, but delayed that until November; later, he said he wouldn’t be coming at all.

Back to the beginning

A search for a new CEO began again, and the board was shocked when Cardwell again was among the candidates forwarded by Brim.

During his second interview, Cardwell explained his reasons for not coming through the first time. He told of going to Thailand to complete the adoption of a baby girl — Alexis, or Alex, whom he and his wife, Kim, were adopting. Instead, Thai authorities took the baby away because the mother hadn’t signed a consent form, Cardwell said.

He told of searching in Thailand for two months before finding the mother and getting her consent to the adoption. That search took priority over everything else, including the job in Powell, he said.

But now Alex was back with her family, he said, and he was ready to begin employment with Powell Valley Healthcare, if the board still wanted him.

And it did. Cardwell still had the strengths they were looking for, and his commitment to his family showed his priorities were in the right place.

Trouble is, none of his story was true.

The Tribune learned much later, through considerable research, that Cardwell indeed had been in Thailand, but he spent much of his time on the golf course and with a Thai woman known there as Mrs. “Bo” Cardwell.

We were unable to find any online sites or records, either in Thailand or in Indiana, to indicate a 2-month-old baby girl named Alex ever was adopted, or that she even existed.

But none of us knew that when Cardwell showed up for his first day of work in March 2011. He seemed to be the long-awaited leader the organization needed. He was popular among most employees. He was outgoing and charismatic, and he had an energy that was motivating and infectious.

He pledged his first-year salary to the Powell Medical Foundation to help establish a women’s health center.

He promised to recruit a dozen physicians to expand services and meet local health care needs.

Board members knew how important that was. Recruiting physicians was the way Barton had helped the organization dig itself out of the $0 cash position it was in when he arrived.

Cardwell told the board about Plake and Associates, a company in Indiana that had successfully recruited doctors for White County Memorial Hospital. The board agreed to his recommendation to recruit through that company.

Deceit

Of course, he didn’t say that most of the money paid for that “recruiting” would end up in his pocket.

Within six months, Cardwell had embezzled nearly $850,000, with 75 percent of that money going to Cardwell and the rest to his friend, Michael Plake of the fictitious Plake and Associates. Auditors for Powell Valley Healthcare later found discrepancies that led to discovery of the thefts and the eventual arrest of Cardwell and Plake.

But before any of that became public knowledge, Cardwell resigned his position at Powell Valley Healthcare. Then, inexplicably, he asked to take it back. Supported by pleas from several doctors, Cardwell asked the PVHC board in September 2011 to allow him to return. After a grueling executive session, the board eventually declined his request.

Earlier that evening, Cardwell had visited with me for nearly half an hour. I was unaware then of his resignation, and I knew nothing of his illegal activities embezzlement. It still amazes and disturbs me to know he could conduct such a normal conversation without any outward sign that anything was amiss.

That gives me some understanding of how Cardwell and others like him are able to perpetrate their crimes for so long without detection: They have no observable conscience and, therefore, give no outward sign of their inner criminality.

Cardwell’s audacity seemed to know no bounds. Following his arrest, he  convinced a federal judge in Casper to allow him to remain free without paying any of his bond, on his promise that he would live with his mother in Indiana. Then, in August 2012, authorities realized he’d disappeared.

More deception

Nearly a year later, in June 2013, law enforcement officials from the U.S. and Thailand finally located Cardwell in Thailand, where he had been living large. He was extradited back to Wyoming, where he finally had to face the consequences of his actions, both in Powell and in White County.

It wasn’t until his crimes were discovered here that officials in Indiana realized he and Plake had perpetrated the same scheme there as well.

But embezzlement wasn’t the worst thing he did to Powell Valley Healthcare.

During his six-month tenure as CEO at Powell Valley Healthcare, he left the organization coasting several times while he was away from the office, representing his absences as business trips. The longest was a stretch of about two months shortly before his resignation, ostensibly for him to move his family here from Indiana.

However, divorce and custody documents filed in Indiana in November 2011 by his now ex-wife state that Cardwell traveled to Thailand four times during the six months of his employment at Powell Valley Healthcare, and that he was in Indiana for only 10 days during that entire time.

Repeated mentions in an online sports newsletter in Pattaya, Thailand, show Cardwell was there in August 2011, playing golf with his Thai wife, Bo Cardwell. Sometimes referred to as “Dr. Paul Cardwell,” he also was mentioned in newsletters in October through January 2012, as was “Mum to be” Bo.

On Feb. 9, 2012, the newsletter congratulated “Mrs Bo Cardwell” on the birth of a baby boy three days earlier.

On March 3, 2012, the newsletter again mentions Paul Cardwell “and his wife, Khun Napawan Nuanta, who has recently had a bouncing baby boy named Alex.”

This baby’s name sheds further doubt on the existence of a baby girl Alexis, also referred to as Alex, the child Cardwell said he and his wife had adopted in fall 2010.

Consequences

Cardwell now is serving a 121-month sentence in federal prison for his crimes in Wyoming and Indiana. That sentence was welcome news, but it doesn’t begin to cover the consequences of the problems he created.

Through his deceptions and lack of leadership, Cardwell put a blight over Powell Valley Healthcare, the very organization he was hired and paid to lead.  Just before he resigned, however, the facade was starting to crack.

For instance, Cardwell told the board a facilities master plan review had been completed by an interested firm. But when I asked for a written report, Cardwell said he had none. That bothered me, and I planned to follow up with Cardwell. But that was the last time I talked to him before he left for weeks, supposedly to move his family from Indiana to Wyoming, and his resignation followed.

A few board members indicated later that they had begun to question things as well, but Cardwell was so well liked, and he seemed like such a good leader, that they continued to believe, for a time, “Paul will fix this.”

What Cardwell actually did was pull the rug out from under his victims’ feet. He singlehandedly eroded morale at Powell Valley Healthcare and the public’s trust in its leadership. By not doing his job, he set the organization back several years — and that, ultimately, was more destructive than his embezzlement.

The money was recovered through insurance and HealthTech, but the damage to the organization was much harder to repair.

Bill Patten, now CEO at Powell Valley Healthcare, described some of the damage Cardwell inflicted.

“The competence and loyalty of the administrative team was questioned. Internal strife was common, and loyalties were called into question,” he told a federal judge during Cardwell’s sentencing hearing.

Other consequences included low morale and the time and attention required to investigate, document and deal with Cardwell’s crimes and other problems he created, and the work needed to “repair and restore trusting relationships,” Patten said.

Throughout the ordeal and afterward, board members who wanted nothing more than to serve their community found themselves wrestling with serious legal issues and financial consequences that had tremendous ripple effects throughout the community.

The good news is, the leaders, medical providers, and employees at Powell Valley Healthcare are good people who continue to work hard to meet the community’s health care needs. While they’ve had their feet knocked out from beneath them several times in the past four years, they’re working to move the organization forward.

I salute those dedicated, hard-working individuals, and I wish them well as they continue to work toward a brighter future for Powell Valley Healthcare and for the Powell community.