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CNN Live At Daybreak

Interview With Patricia Villone Garcia

Aired November 01, 2001 - 08:18   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: When an anthrax-tainted letter was sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle last month, fear and uncertainties swept Capitol Hill. Senator Daschle spoke about the uncertainty last night on CNN's "LARRY KING LIVE".

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

SEN. TOM DASCHLE, (D), SD: I think is some cases the media has jumped to conclusions that they probably should not have. Statements have been made by public officials that may have been premature, so we probably exacerbated the uncertainty.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

O'BRIEN: Journalist Patricia Villone Garcia was in the wrong place at the wrong time when the Daschle letter was found. She was among dozens given preventive medicine even though she tested negative. Villone Garcia was on Capitol Hill the day the letter was discovered at the Hart Senate office building, but she was not inside that building as was first reported. So although not an anthrax victim, Villone Garcia says she was a victim of erroneous reports and an attached stigma.

Patricia Villone Garcia is in Washington to share her story. Good to have you with us.

PATRICIA VILLONE GARCIA, JOURNALIST: Good morning. How are you?

O'BRIEN: All right. I assume when you came down with symptoms, which sort of mimicked anthrax symptoms -- you might have had some cause for concern.

VILLONE GARCIA: Well, first off I just wanted to note that it was the 16th -- the day after the letter was opened in Daschle's office that I was on Capitol Hill. It was not on the 15th at all, but yes I did start mimicking some symptoms somewhere about Friday, Saturday when I was at a conference in Oregon and came home and at that point, some of my colleagues were getting tested. They had been at the Brentwood facility, as well as on Capitol Hill.

So I went to a hospital -- a local hospital, where basically the triage -- I never got past the triage because they looked at me kind of like an anthrax panic American. So I ended up just going home at that point and starting over the next day at D.C. General Hospital where all the postal workers were.

(CROSSTALK)

O'BRIEN: So you had to go back a couple of times just to get to the point where you could get tested then.

VILLONE GARCIA: Well the second day, which was then the 23rd, I went to D.C General Hospital and stood in line with the postal workers. It was a two-hour wait. I was anticipating getting a test. I think just everybody was -- get a test, tell me, no I don't have it.

I had reason to believe it could be the flu, a respiratory infection -- I suffer from allergies. But I just wanted to be tested to be safe. And instead what I found out was they were no longer doing the nasal swabs and that they were just passing out a 10-day pack of Cipro.

So there was a lot of concern that the people on Capitol Hill had been tested and we weren't getting tested. So there was a long conversation about why the nasal swabs were no longer used except for -- or maybe they were never used from the beginning except for environmental testing to determine where the spores might be in certain areas.

But it clearly -- everybody thought they were getting a nasal swab at that time to be tested positive or negative for anthrax and it turned out not to be the case.

O'BRIEN: All right, so at this juncture you have reason to believe you might have been exposed to anthrax, might be symptomatic and you had the sense that people were not listening to your complaints. Were they dismissing you? What was their reaction?

VILLONE GARCIA: Well only the first hospital that I went to. The second one at D.C. General, they basically were just passing out the Cipro. I was kind of herded through the line. There were thousands of people in line. At the very end I said well, what happens when this 10-day pack runs out if I'm still sick, and somebody said oh, you're feeling sick. Well, you need to go talk to our doctor here and I did, and they basically told me to immediately get further evaluation, in which case that evening I went to another hospital and went in there and they immediately checked me in, and I stayed there for three days.

O'BRIEN: All right so what's the moral of the story, then, from you as a journalist had kind of a first-hand account with what is really going on here. Do you have the sense that the system is responding with a fair degree of chaos, perhaps understandable chaos and are they getting their act together? Do you have that sense?

VILLONE GARCIA: It's definitely chaotic. I think it will slow down from being chaos into something that's a little more normal in the next few months when people have a better idea of what they're looking for. Everybody's on a learning curve and I think the health officials are doing the best job that they can. But it's clearly not systematic because the photographer, for example, that was with me every moment that day went to another hospital -- yet a third place and was basically told that he was not even offered Cipro and was told well, if you have anthrax, you'd probably be dead right now.

So we're clearly not getting a very systematic message about what to do and what to look for. The hospital that checked me in was very professional. They handled it very well. Even those who were frightened -- I had -- there were comments about maybe I should have gone through the decontamination unit. But their rationale -- the rationale of that particular person, you know, was reasonable I thought. His point was we don't know when you come in if you have spores on your clothing or on your personal belongings and therefore, we don't know if we're in danger. So I kind of ...

O'BRIEN: Right.

VILLONE GARCIA: ... jokingly assured him I had a shower the time I was exposed, so that shouldn't be a concern.

O'BRIEN: Let me ask you one quick question -- our time is elapsing here. But did you have the sense through all this that you were treated more like a guinea pig than a patient perhaps as doctors and medical professionals try to learn as they go along here.

VILLONE GARCIA: Most definitely. This was -- everybody is in a learning curve and they -- and they are now telling us that. I think initially they didn't, but they are telling us now they're in a learning curve and clearly, I went in for an answer, I came out with more questions. Basically, there is no testing for exposure. There's only -- they can only conclude whether you're infected or not -- in which case they told me I was not. I'd probably be critically ill right now or worse if I was infected. So that's a good sign, but I still am under observation, and I'm still on Cipro and I will be getting more blood work done in the next four weeks.

O'BRIEN: Patricia Villone Garcia, a person who has experienced anthrax and its scare in an unusual way, certainly for a journalist. We appreciate you joining us and giving us your insights into all of this.

(CROSSTALK)

VILLONE GARCIA: Oh, thank you, glad to be here.

(CROSSTALK)

O'BRIEN: All right, we certainly can agree with more questions and answers at this juncture of this story.

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