By Beth Lucas
East Valley Tribune
APACHE JUNCTION, Ariz. — Tim O’Brien’s career as an Apache Junction firefighter came to a rocky end just six months before his retirement.
The 19-year paramedic/firefighter with Apache Junction Fire District was terminated earlier this year following a two-year battle to keep his job. It was a battle that garnered him support from the local firefighters union, a fight, he says, that came only after he challenged his bosses.
Now the Apache Junction resident won’t be able to collect retirement and is on the verge of losing his longtime home on the edge of the Superstition Mountains.
It all began over a self-reported discipline issue that originally resulted in three days off without pay and one-year of administrative probation.
On Oct. 2, 2006, O’Brien was called to the scene where a man, Charles Despain, complained of pain from an aneurysm as police arrested him.
O’Brien admitted that he thought Despain was only trying to get away from the police. He said he joined two ambulance workers on the ride to the hospital out of concern for their safety.
“I am a very peaceful individual. I don’t like trouble,” O’Brien told the Tribune.
He admitted that the patient got to him, and that he held up a fist to show Despain that he could defend himself and throw a punch. He and the two ambulance workers describe Despain in written statements as argumentative and asking to fight.
At one point, O’Brien suggested Despain meet him to box at a local boxing club, something O’Brien said he did to end the confrontation with the patient.
‘Conflict resolution’
“It was my attempt at conflict resolution and at calming him down,” O’Brien said.
He said he decided to report himself to be upfront about the incident — which he said he mishandled — and to ensure the district it was unusual and wouldn’t happen again.
The fire district took O’Brien’s description of his actions seriously, and administrators agreed to the three shifts of no pay, which completed O’Brien’s original discipline.
That should have been the end of it.
O’Brien agreed to the discipline. The only thing he objected to in the internal investigation was an allegation that he’d used foul language. He filed a grievance asking for the language to be amended — a move that he now said cost him his job.
Then-fire Chief John Flynn reopened the case, based on what fire district officials say were new details on what happened. Flynn would later state during O’Brien’s final administrative hearing that he found the firefighter to be a danger to his colleagues and the public.
David Montgomery, a deputy chief and spokesman for the fire district, said the case is unusual but the district did everything it could to help O’Brien.
In reviews of past years, O’Brien is called a mind-tempered guy. But Montgomery — who worked as O’Brien’s boss at one point — said personal problems changed O’Brien’s performance during the last few years. The problems included a costly lawsuit between O’Brien and a neighbor over who controlled the road leading to their homes.
“I will tell you unequivocally that I believe Mr. O’Brien was given more chances than most employees in any private or public organization are ever given,” Montgomery said.
He acknowledged how close O’Brien was to retirement, adding, “I think everybody wants to see their fellow employees make it to that point.
“But,” he said, “sometimes you just get to the point where it becomes such a liability to keep an employee on, and that can’t become the reason to keep the liability.”
In a long process to get O’Brien back into uniform, he received psychological evaluations and was tested for fitness. At one point, he failed a drug test by not listing an anxiety medication he had taken, and the fire district sought to terminate him.
With support from the United Mesa Firefighters Union, which also includes Apache Junction, O’Brien appealed the decision and won his job back after proving he had a prescription for the medication. Montgomery said that’s when the district reopened the case of the original incident almost two years after the ambulance ride.
Struggling financially after being out of work and under unpaid investigation since December 2006, O’Brien had taken a job with the state fire marshal’s office in late 2007.
O’Brien said he put in notice to leave the fire marshal position effective early February 2008, not long after he’d taken the job, so he could return to working in Apache Junction.
On the final day of his notice, he received a letter in the mail stating he was once again fired, this time for the original 2006 violation.
This time it stuck.
“This whole thing has devastated my life, my wife’s life,” O’Brien said.
Bryan Jeffries, president of the firefighters union, said he has defended firefighters employed by the Apache Junction district before. But Jeffries said O’Brien’s case stood out because the district fired him for a personnel issue that had already been resolved almost two years ago.
‘Clear retaliation’
Jeffries said he felt the district was sending a bad signal by punishing an employee after he filed a grievance.
“It was clear retaliation,” O’Brien said.
But Mongtomery argues that the original investigation was never complete, it was just set aside while the fire district dealt with the drug issue.
Both Apache Junction and Mesa police officials say they have a long history dealing with Despain. And, in fact, police records show Despain has at least four times in Mesa complained about injuries — from the same aneurysm complaint to claiming to have a broken arm — during arrests, many of which were based on warrants for missed court dates. Despain could not be reached for comment.
O’Brien said he felt he was a target for questioning the top brass.
He’s still searching for a new job and struggling to make ends meet.
Now he feels abandoned by the fire district he once considered his family.
“To work for so long toward something and for it to all be taken away,” O’Brien said. “I can’t believe it.”