The Phoenix VA hospital whistleblower processes her 2014 ordeal in a new book.
Paula Pedene began working as the public information officer at the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Hospital in 1994, after serving more than 11 years as a U.S. Navy communications specialist. But in 2014, Pedene became front-page news herself when she helped a doctor there, Sam Foote, expose the bogus bookkeeping directors were using to cover up how long veterans were waiting to receive care.
Today Pedene, 64, works from her Scottsdale home running the nonprofit Honoring America’s Veterans, which puts on the annual Phoenix Veterans Day parade, and promoting her 2022 book on the scandal, A Sacred Duty, co-written with novelist Doug Williams.
After you first reported the cooked books in 2010, your bosses reassigned you from the executive suites to a desk in the library, which soon moved to the basement. It sounds like the Milton subplot in Office Space.
Well, I got to keep my stapler! [laughs] As whistleblowers, we learn that it’s really a slow death for your career. They take away your duties, make you wait for meetings, dress you down in public. It’s this constant harassment.
As it happened, putting you down in the library actually helped you gather more evidence.
Exactly! Had I not been banished to the basement, I wouldn’t have had the ability to put all the pieces together. In the library, I was hearing from veterans every day who were complaining about the waits and delays. So I started writing...
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