By David Goodhue
Miami Herald
MONROE COUNTY, Fla. — Monroe County officials are urging a judge to harshly sentence the former captain of the Florida Keys’ air ambulance service who was convicted of covering for the program’s chief flight nurse, who was stealing powerful pain medication to feed her addiction while on duty.
Andrea Thompson, 47, faces up to 68 years in prison after a six-member jury convicted her last month on of two counts of official misconduct, three counts of giving law enforcement false information, two counts of attempted evidence tampering and three counts of tampering with a witness.
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Thompson, who was a Monroe County Fire Rescue division chief in charge of the Trauma Star helicopter ambulance service, is accused of not immediately reporting missing powerful pain medication, including fentanyl, from the chopper’s hangar at the Marathon International Airport in July 2022.
The program’s then-chief flight nurse, Lynda Rusinowski, told Thompson she had been stealing the drugs because she was addicted, according to court records. Instead of reporting the admission to her supervisors, Thompson booked Rusinowksi into an out-of-county detox program and a rehab facility in New Jersey before she could be drug tested, according to court documents.
She then drove Rusinowski to the West Palm Beach detox facility and ordered one of her subordinates to remove all drugs and paraphernalia found in Rusinowski’s truck, which was parked at Thompson’s house, investigators say.
Monroe County Administrator Christine Hurley sent a letter Monday to Judge Mark Jones, who is scheduled to sentence Thompson Thursday, asking for swift punishment. Hurley called the scandal “sweeping and unprecedented,” adding that it eroded the public’s trust in the fire department, caused rifts and low morale among employees and generated embarrassing news coverage.
“The county also asks you to consider the message that her sentence will send to current and future employees and the public,” Hurley wrote. “If the sentence is light, employees will be reluctant to come forward in the future to report crimes and testify against wrongdoers, and they may once again (as happened in this case) act to impede law enforcement investigations and destroy and conceal evidence. If the sentence is light, employees and members of the public will not believe that they are protected from this type of behavior.”
Thompson’s attorneys filed an Oct. 12 motion for a new trial, arguing testimony given by witnesses, including former colleagues and Monroe County Sheriff’s Office detectives, shows she did report discrepancies in the medication logs, including forged signatures and altered drug amounts, to her supervisor the night of July 24, 2022.
But prosecutors and Hurley said that’s misleading. It was one member of Thompson’s staff who reported the problems with the logs to her that morning, and Thompson waited eight hours to tell her supervisor, prosecutors say. And even then, she “only divulged a small part of the information,” which allowed Rusinowski to fly on duty for another 36 hours, Hurley wrote.
All the while, Thompson was arranging for Rusinowski to leave town for rehab and getting rid of evidence implicating her in the thefts, the county said.
“At every juncture, Thompson placed the interests of her friend Lynda Rusinowski and Thompson’s own interest in her position as Union President (which she described at trial as ‘her job’) ahead of the interests of the County and its citizens,” Hurley wrote in her letter to Judge Jones.
Sheriff’s office detectives investigating the case also say Thompson misled them and her bosses about the extent of what she knew about Rusinowski’s theft.
Sean Parys and Kendall Coffey, Thompson’s attorneys, filed a response to Hurley’s letter Tuesday seeking it to be inadmissible for sentencing because they say the county does not meet the legal definition of a victim. The motion also argues that the letter contradicts what witnesses testified during the trial about the timeline of when Thompson reported her concerns about the medication log.
Parys and Coffey also said in the motion that another Fire Rescue captain reported concerns about Trauma Star medication logs in 2019, and his “rank was stripped” when he wouldn’t let it go. And, one of Thompson’s subordinates knew that Rusinowski may have been stealing meds a month before Thompson found out and didn’t say anything, the attorneys stated.
“Thompson is not responsible for their choices. The County is wrong on the facts, and the Court cannot rely on them,” Parys and Coffey wrote.
Thompson was hired by Monroe County Fire Rescue in July 2001 and was earning an annual salary of $151,127 when she was fired in 2024.
Rusinowski, 60, pleaded no contest in February to 14 counts of grand theft of a controlled substance and three counts of official misconduct and was sentenced to five years of drug probation. The veteran healthcare worker started her service with Trauma Star in 2017.
The investigation led to an August 2024 grand jury indictment that not only charged Thompson, but also then-county administrator Roman Gastesi and Dr. Sandra Schwemmer, who was the county’s medical director at the time and in charge of all medications controlled and distributed by the Fire Rescue department.
“For four years, while this case has proceeded, Monroe County Fire Rescue has been in turmoil as it relates to the actions of Andrea Thompson, the necessary changes to internal policy, internal conditions, a change to the culture, and ongoing waiting to put this behind the Department,” Hurley wrote.
Gastesi, 65, was charged with one count of official misconduct. The grand jury said in its report that he “intervened and stopped HR and Employee Services from conducting an internal investigation by an outside third-party independent firm” of Thompson’s handling of Rusinowski’s theft.
Gastesi agreed to enter a pre-trial intervention program in July 2025, which he has since completed, and the State Attorney’s Office dropped the charges. He now wants the county to reimburse the $127,838 in legal fees he spent fighting the case.
Schwemmer was charged with one count of official misconduct, one count of providing false information to law enforcement and one count of altering patient records. The grand jury accused Schwemmer, 72, in its report of delegating her responsibilities “to other EMS/Trauma Star personnel, including but not limiting to Andrea Thompson, Lynda Rusinowski and others.”
She also entered into a pretrial intervention agreement last October and the case against her was dropped. One of the conditions of the agreement was that she cooperate with the investigation.
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