Rosemarie’s Story

Pushkin. One morning last December, my co host Jess McHugh and our producer Amy Gaines McQuaid traveled to Rhode Island sit down with a woman named Rosemarie Coffee.

Oh, he's going to market to mailman, like all good dogs do. Boo.

That's Rosemarie talking to her dog Boo. When Jess and Amy arrived, Rosemarie had pastries from a local bakery waiting for them. And Rosemarie she likes to take care of people like this. She's sixty years old and recently retired, but before that she spent her career supporting people when they're at their most vulnerable. She worked as a community support specialist and for a time Rosemary took care of Sarah Kavanaugh.

Well, I've worked with her. I'm guessing three years.

Wow, So it's absolute the end. So it would.

Write exactly to the point.

Sarah enrolled in the Wounded Warrior Independence Program. It's designed for veterans with life changing injuries. And it was through this program that Wounded Warrior paid for Rosemares services.

What did you understand her physical injuries to be she had the traumatic brain injury, she had a prosthetic hip, supposedly, and she was also going through cancer treatment, the prosthetic, the brain injury, and the PTSD with the primary challenges.

She still remembers the first time that she showed up to Sarah's house.

At the time, Sarah was like curled up in a blanket in you know, on the couch in front of the window, just looking out the window, all forlorn and shy and withdrawn, and according to the case manager, she you know, she wasn't getting adjusted to the community and she really needed a lot of support. If you can just picture that person that's just not been able to do anything, you know, or go anywhere, you know, really struggling, you know, that was that was the persona that she put out there.

Throughout our reporting, Jess and I had heard these stories about Sarah running down mountain trails and competing in epic workout challenges, but this, this was an entirely different Sarah we were hearing about. Rose Marie worked with Sarah right up until Sarah's double life came crashing down. Throughout all that time, Sarah let rose Marie into her home, into her life, and we wondered what did rose Marie c turns out she saw and heard an awful lot, some

I couldn't even tell your name. I couldn't even tell you necessarily who I suspected. But there were a couple incidents when somebody had to call Sarah's caseworker at the VA when Sarah's standing in the rooms or wasn't Sarah, So who was on the other end of the phone.

Welcome back to Deep Cover Season six. The Truth about Sarah. This is rose Marie's story. Rose Marie has worked with people living with disabilities for decades, and if there's one thing she's learned, it's that every case is different.

So there isn't a set blueprint for working with someone with brain injury. It's different in the sense of each person's injury manifests itself in different ways.

Rose Marie told us that most of the people that she works with have had their worlds turned upside down and they're still trying to find their footing.

So they've had pretty much a normal life leading up to this injury, and then they may have had a car accident, a stroke, a brain tumor, and then everything changes, including personality changes. So that's part of it that you wouldn't see it with other disabilities.

Necessarily her job helping people get back into the world, running errands, doing chores, the simple stuff, which is no longer so simple. That's where Rosemary comes in. That's what she started doing for Sarah.

At the time I met her. Supposedly she couldn't even go into a store, she couldn't go to a target, she couldn't go grocery shopping, she couldn't you know, take care of her household.

Rosemary believed Sarah was dealing with PTSD, so she tried to break things down, make simple tasks even simpler.

Okay, your first task is to try to just go into target, you know, get one item and go through the register and that's a success. Or we'd go, you know, make a grocery list, like what do I need? What am I going to eat this week?

And rose Marie was told certain things were going to be hard for Sarah.

Okay, these are things emotionally she needs to address, you know, going out in the community like the DMV would have been a big trigger for her. You know, to do that by herself.

So rose Marie went with her to the DMV to get special purple heart plates for her car. You might remember Sarah claimed she earned a purple heart in combat. Somehow she had the paperwork to back that claim up, and she got the plates without even realizing it or meaning to. Rose Marie had played a small role in helping Sarah deepen her deception. As they spent more time together, rose Marie and Sarah began to form a bond.

So I was supporting her. And of course when you're doing that, you want to build a rapport. You want to have the person be comfortable, so you're your I mean, I was willing to do the things with her. Let's say she's no, she's got to do laundry. Well, I'm not just going to stand there with a clipboard, you know, and talk at her.

Instead, rose Marie said, let's chat as we fold the clothes. And over time, rose Marie became a sounding board for Sarah.

She talked about things that bothered her. She talked about relationships, she talked about family. She was always talking about financial troubles that was weighing on her.

The version of Sarah that we kept hearing about from other people was tough, unbreakable, always smiling through the pain, the kind of person people held up as a hero. But rose Marie saw something else, something that seemed more tender and fragile.

I would say about ninety nine percent of the time when I arrived at her home, she was in tears. Wow, she was anxious, she was worked up. There was things that had happened, and then you know, we would talk and she would come down and then we'd say, okay, what's the plan, and we would you know, be able to move on to an activity that she orchestrated that we should do.

One of these things was physical therapy.

She wanted to start physical therapy and the organization was paying for it, wounded Warrior, and so she was nervous about going to the first visit. So I took her to her first visit with Sam.

Yep, Rosemarie says she took Sarah to her very first appointment with Sam, the physical therapist she went on to become romantically involved with. At first, nothing stood out to Rosemary, but over time she came to understand that Sarah's relationship with Sam had evolved.

It took a long time before I saw evidence there was something else with Sam And I'm trying to be professional. I'm not going to delve into like obviously she had just gotten married, you know, not long.

Before or Rose Marie knew Nicole, Sarah's wife at the time. She spent many hours in the home that they shared, and she did her best to stay out of this whole mess and just stick to her job being a community support specialist. Well, it's tricky work. You get pulled into people's lives, the mess, the chaos. Rose Marie kept her focus, helped the person in front of you. What she didn't know was just how messy it really was.

I show up. She's outside, she's not even in the house. She's outside, she's anxious. She's got the plates in her hands, she's got the paperwork. She was just like, we have to go to the DMV. I have to return these plates. They're causing so much problems. I just want to get rid of them.

Sarah was desperate to return those purple heart license plates. It was a request that seemed to baffle the DMV staff, but Sarah just wanted those plates gone.

The staff at the DMV were like so nice, and they were trying to get at what was going on, like why why do you want to return these? Is somebody harassing you? Like, because we can help you, you know, We'll get contact whoever we need to to help you with this. If you know, you should feel like you you earn these And she's like, no, no, I just have to get rid of it. I don't want to talk about it.

Soon after this, reports about Sarah's fraud started circulating. Rose Marie was at home when her husband showed her an article that revealed Sarah's deception.

My husband came to me and said, is this Sarah Sarah in the news is showing me on my phone. I was just like, oh my god, they really have, you know, gone out of their way to hurt her. Oh my god, poor Sarah. What's my first response? I was like reaching out to her and be like, are you okay?

But so initially it sounds like your reaction is disbelief.

Oh yes, yeah. I had no reason to doubt her, and I was just like, what are these people doing to her? Oh my god? Is she okay?

You know?

Call her right away? And I just said to her, are you okay? And she's like, well no, And I was like, well, if it's not true, you have to defend yourself, Sarah, you know, and she's like I can't. She said, I can't. I was like, what do you mean. She's like, I can't defend myself. And then I was like, tell me what's going on. She's like, I can't talk. I'll call you right back. I'm getting another call, and then she hung up and that was it.

Rose Marie soon learned about the investigation into Sarah's fraud and what the FEDS had begun to discover, and she came to the unsettling realization that she had been deceived for years. In some ways, rose Marie knew Sarah so intimately, but in other ways she didn't know her at all. We asked rose Marie if she knew whether Sarah had

I've taken her to the VA, So I mean, I have no idea what I took what I took her to, but you know, definitely dropped her off and waited in the car in that kind of thing.

Part of what made Sarah's story so convincing to Rose Marie and others we interviewed was the fact that someone from Sarah's healthcare team was in contact with them. This person's name was Ivy. Supposedly, Ivy was a social worker at the VA assigned to managing Sarah's care.

She had a lot of talks about the social worker Ivy at the VA, So that's what I thought was going on.

But what was really going on with Ivy, Well that's something we're all still trying to figure out more on that. After the break, a few people we've interviewed, including Rosemarie, say they spoke with someone claiming to be Ivy. Rosemarie told us about one conference call in particular. It was a check in with Sarah's healthcare team. Rosemarie was on the line, as was a case manager from the Wounded Warrior Project, and then there was Ivy from the VA, offering updates on Sarah's care, so.

She would go on and talk about her medical situation, the cancer, what they were trying to do there, So I'd be there with Sarah, and then the other two were in conference call, and so Sarah was in the room with yes, so she couldn't have been the one on the phone right right, And that was the case as well another time some of other woman was speaking and as Ivy.

The question that now comes up, the one that Rose Marie still thinks about, and the one that we still think about a lot, is this who's on the phone pretending to be Ivy offering these made up details about how Sarah's treatment was going. It wasn't Sarah, because on that particular call, Sarah was sitting in the room with Rose Marie. So it had to be someone else, someone who was complicit in Sarah's lies.

So there had to be other people involved. There absolutely had to be, because I clearly remember at least two times when Ivy was on the phone. But yeah, there had to be another person.

We talked to Tom Donnelly about this. If you recall, he's the in house investigator at the VA's Office of Inspector General. Donnelly's thought about this a lot.

We could never proof that another person was involved, but it's evidence that leads me to believe that one hundred percent somebody else was involved.

Donnelly told us there really is someone named Ivy who works for the Providence VA, but investigators had interviewed her over the course of their investigation and they felt convinced that she was not in on this in any way. We actually got in touch with the real Ivy and she told us quote, I knew Sarah from the time she was a social work intern. We would eat lunch together, and although she never pretended to be a veteran with me or other coworkers, she would tell us story after

Like we figured out who Ivy's phone number was, Ivy's phone number was Sarah's VA issued government cell phone. So I don't know where that phone was or who had it, but we do know that it was used.

In other words, Donnelly thinks someone was using Sarah's work phone to fake the whole thing, calling people pretending to be Ivy. But if it wasn't Sarah, well, then who was it. That question has yet to be answered. Maybe one day we'll find out. Before Rosemarie learned about Sarah's lies, she says she was never really suspicious. She felt nothing but empathy for Sarah.

You see, this person has been impacted, and her life has been so impaired, and she's so young. I mean, it really pulled on your heart, There's no question about it. Everybody who met her felt sorry for her. Every time. Everyone wanted to help her.

Rose Marie became so attached to Sarah that even after retiring in twenty twenty one, she continued to help her, volunteering her time for free.

I just knew I had to be there for her, like I felt when she reacted that she wasn't going to have my contact and she felt so lost. There was just so much going on that I wanted to be there for her. I wanted to be able to say, you can call me anytime. I'm here for you. And she was like, great, okay, you know, ever said, oh, you don't have to do that, or you know, I don't want, you know, she definitely let me do it.

It's really generous of you.

I don't know.

I mean, you.

Can't work in this career, in this field and not care you know what. You can't. It's just, you know, it doesn't make me any kind of a special person. It's just that's where I was at, you know, at the time.

The last time rose Marie saw Sarah was on the day of this sentencing in March of twenty twenty three. Rose Marie was there in the courtroom, surrounded by people who are angry and demanding justice.

You know, by that time, you know, sympathy had worn off and everybody just wanted to see her be held accountable, you know. So basically it was Sarah and her attorney and then a whole bunch of other people just you know, rooting for her to go to jail.

At sentencing, Rosemary connected with many other people in Sarah's orbit, like Michelle the Jim Buddy and Dave the VFW commander. Rosemarie had felt hurt and embarrassed that she'd fallen for Sarah's schemes, but when she looked around, she started to see the bigger picture, and it put things into perspective.

So many people got scammed. I mean, that's where I stopped beating myself up. Was people smarter than me got scammed, you know, in a lot larger ways. All the times all of us could have intersected somehow, we didn't, you know, And then but it just didn't happen. Oh God, I got to save some grief for people.

I just wish I could have saved some grief for people. It felt like rose Marie was basically saying, if only I had figured this out, maybe we could have avoided this whole mess. The fallout from Sarah's actions was far reaching, but one of the cruelest outcomes is that someone like Rosemarie would be left feeling even a little bit responsible, blaming herself for her own generosity, wondering if that very

Is there anything that you would want to ask her or like, do you think that you'll.

No? I think everybody just probably wants to know why, But you'd never get an answer that we could trust. If I asked her why, I wouldn't get a real honest you know. So what I really ask, you know, just a part of my past and time to move on.

So many people in this story were deceived. Rosemarie saw this for herself at the sentencing hearing. But the human mind, it's a curious thing. It's not always governed by rationality or self love. Our friends may tell us we did no wrong. We may yearn to believe them, and perhaps

I don't think it ends. That's what I worry about. I guess the biggest thing I wonder is like what she's going to do after, because how do you come out of jail and having done this and have some kind of a normal life. She's going to have to create another set of lies. She's not going to just come out and say, yeah, I just went to prison because I scanned all these people and I stole valor, and you know, so, I don't think it stops. That's what I'm afraid of.

These last words, they've stayed with me. I find them haunting. As storytellers were always chasing after the elusive perfect endings, looking for that final note of closure. But as long as people remember, and as long as they're willing to ask that most human of questions, what if, then there is no end, not really, only more questions that spin into the night. This episode was produced by Amy Gaines McQuaid, Jess McHugh, Tally Emlin, and Sonya Gerwitt. It was edited