Disoriented from the effects of a stroke, Carol Carlson drove to the Kingston ferry terminal on a Monday morning in December 2017 and got her car turned around at the toll booth.

In a bizarre series of events, Washington State Patrol troopers accused Carlson of drunken driving and booked the Edmonds woman into the Kitsap County Jail. This set off a five-day odyssey where Carlson was essentially lost in Kitsap County, going days without medical attention — despite multiple contacts with police and corrections officers — showing how a person in distress can fall through the cracks.

“Once it started it kept going,” Carlson, 64, said. “And nobody stopped it.”

After being released from the jail in Port Orchard the next morning, she wandered the streets in a fog — without a coat, a phone or her medications — eventually winding up in a Bremerton homeless shelter where she suffered seizures and finally was taken to a doctor. She still had to wait another two days before her family and friends could track her down.

Looking back now, her strange trip in Kitsap County seems like a nightmare.

“I’m piecing it together more and more,” Carlson said.

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Using the state Public Records Act and interviews, the Kitsap Sun arranged arrest reports, prosecutor’s notes, jail records, medical forms and 911 calls to reconstruct the path she took.

“It was such a horror movie,” said Carlson’s daughter, Lynn Moore, of Bellingham.

Moore wonders how two state troopers and whoever drew her mother’s blood to test for the presence of alcohol – plus a Bremerton police officer and Kitsap County Jail staff — never seemed to question if she was in need of a doctor.

“This is really happening?” Moore thought at the time. “The whole thing is crazy.”

Carlson, a retired international travel agent, had just finalized a divorce a few months prior and was house-sitting for friends in Hansville.

A head injury in 2014 had hastened her retirement and left her with ongoing health issues, but she remained independent and never stopped traveling. While staying in Kitsap County, Carlson took the opportunity to drive out to the far end of the Olympic Peninsula, staying nights in Neah Bay and La Push and returning to Hansville two days before her arrest.

Moore knows her mother has traveled alone to places farther than Kitsap County, so she doesn’t panic if she doesn’t get her text messages immediately returned.

“If my mom goes off for a little while, I didn’t necessarily worry right away,” Moore said.

Monday, December 11, 2017

Carlson arrived at the toll booth at the Kingston ferry terminal at about 10:30 a.m. and asked the ferries worker if she had to pay in cash.

The worker pointed to a sign showing the credit cards they accepted.

“She was very confussed (sic) as to how she wanted to pay and just sat there looking at me,” the worker wrote in a statement, included in police reports. “She then stated she would leave and come back when she had decided what she wanted to use.”

Another ferry worker was called over to help with the customer “who seemed out of sorts” and wasn’t responding to directions and then ran over a curb and started to drive onto a one-way street.

The trooper, a handler of the dogs trained to detect explosives, found Carlson’s car pointed the wrong way at the booth and said she almost struck one of the ferry workers before finally putting the transmission in park.

The trooper wrote that when she asked if Carlson was OK, Carlson responded: “Well, I have been drinking.” The trooper asked how much. “Two glasses of wine.”

Further, the trooper wrote that Carlson's eyes were bloodshot and she could smell “an odor of intoxicants” from Carlson’s mouth when she spoke.

The trooper had Carlson perform field sobriety tests, which she did not perform well. She showed other signs of intoxication, the trooper wrote.

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The trooper then handcuffed Carlson. When asked if she takes medication, Carlson twice repeated her daily regimen but said she didn’t know why she took the medication, according to reports.

Carlson and her daughter said that Carlson doesn’t drink. Carlson can’t explain what she may have said — and doubts she admitted to drinking — and wishes the troopers would have paid more attention to the Breathalyzer results.

“I haven’t had anything to drink in a long time,” Carlson said. “I don’t drink.”

At about 11:21 a.m. a second trooper showed up and administered a breath test, which turned up negative, no sign of alcohol.

That trooper wrote that she did not smell alcohol on Carlson, contradicting the first trooper’s report, but observed Carlson’s eyes appeared bloodshot and wrote that Carlson repeated that she drank alcohol that morning. The trooper wrote that Carlson said she could not remember what her prescription medication was meant to treat.

Carlson’s car was impounded, with her coat and phone inside. She was taken to Harrison Medical Center, though only so her blood to could be drawn to build a drunken-driving case against her. While at the hospital, Carlson kept writing the wrong date on a form consenting to the blood draw.

The trooper wrote that she could not find contact information for someone to pick up Carlson on the Edmonds side, writing that Carlson said she did not know any phone numbers. The trooper wrote that she called a number for Carlson passed along by 911 dispatchers, but did not include in her report the number she called.

“I left a voicemail but never received a callback,” the trooper wrote.

During their time together, the trooper wrote that when she asked about her medications, Carlson couldn’t say what they were meant to treat.

“Carlson was unable to hold a conversation or answer questions completely,” the trooper wrote. “Carlson stated she did not have any kids and did not have a significant other.”

She denied having depression or dementia or Alzheimer's and the trooper wrote: “I would give her simple instructions about where to stand or how I was going to handcuff her and she would do something different.”

The blood test results, completed in April and provided to the Kitsap Sun by Carlson, show there was no alcohol in her system. The screening found in her blood an antidepressant and a medication used to treat seizures.

While being booked into jail, the trooper wrote that corrections officers found two pills in Carlson’s purse.

The trooper used a website to identify the pills as gabapentin, the anti-seizure medication later detected in Carlson’s blood. However, the trooper made no note in her report of what the medication was meant to treat.

The Kitsap County Jail has contracts with a company to provide medical services to inmates, but the Kitsap County Sheriff's Office cited privacy laws when declining to turn over any documentation of Carlson's stay.

Carlson remembers the other women in her cell were kind to her and asked why she was in jail. She responded that she didn’t know. A woman said she would try to find out.

The Sheriff's Office did confirm that Carlson was booked into jail at 1:52 p.m. on Dec. 11, 2017, by the Washington State Patrol and was “released to the street” the next morning at 9:09 a.m.

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Tuesday, December 12, 2017

Where Carlson went and what she did for the next 16 hours after her release from jail are a jumble. She remembers going to a Navy museum across the street, however, there is no museum across the street from the jail and none nearby that match the description. She later figured she may have waited at the county administration building. Wherever she found herself, it kept her out of the cold until workers there told her she had to leave.

“The janitors found me and I remember asking if I could stay,” Carlson said. “They said ‘no’ and I left so they wouldn’t get into trouble.”

Moore said her mother waited outside the jail for a ride, mistakenly thinking her daughter had been called.

“She was waiting for me to come pick her up,” Moore said. “If she was thinking clearly she would not have just sat there.”

Carlson does remember the weather.

“It was really cold and I didn’t have a coat,” she said. Although it didn’t rain that day, Weather Underground listed the average temperature as 37 degrees.

Meanwhile, Moore was beginning to suspect something may be amiss.

She received a call from an aunt in Florida on Monday or Tuesday, saying she was concerned that she hadn’t been able to reach Carlson the Thursday before. One of Carlson’s three sisters, Diane, who lived in Florida, had terminal lung cancer and her condition was deteriorating.

Moore knew that her mother was planning to spend some time in Kitsap County and on the Olympic Peninsula, but she wasn’t certain of the exact dates. An aunt said she had heard from Carlson when she was in La Push, but nothing since.

Moore wondered if her mother lost her phone or the charger. She knew her mother had injured her head a few years back and had been dealing with health issues, but she had also just finalized a divorce from Moore’s father and given her mother’s independence — she had traveled by herself in Africa, China and Southeast Asia — she didn’t jump to any conclusions.

Martha Lingen and her husband returned Tuesday night to their Hansville house and immediately noticed something was odd. The lights were on, the coffee was out, Carlson’s toiletries were still there and she hadn’t responded to calls to her cell phone.

“She would have never left the house that way,” said Lingen, who has been friends with Carlson since college.

However, Lingen did find the folder Carlson left behind for her friends, listing recommendations on where to stay the next time they vacationed on the coast. Plus, Carlson had house sat for them before and typically left before her friends arrived back home so they could relax after being away.

Carlson, still in Port Orchard, had her purse, though not the faculties to reach out for help, and made her way down the hill from the jail to the waterfront and caught the foot ferry to Bremerton.

Next, she recalls seeing a bus with “Central” on its display. Thinking it would take her someplace centrally located, she got on board. Instead, the bus dropped her off in a desolate part of town.

“There was nothing else nearby,” Carlson said. “Or else I would have walked.”

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Wednesday, December 13, 2017

At 12:53 a.m., 911 dispatchers received a call about a woman sitting for about 2 ½ hours at a bus stop near Auto Center Way and Fifth Street, according to records relayed by the Bremerton Police Department.

An officer went to check on her and reported at about 1:16 a.m. he was taking a woman to the Salvation Army.

Carlson recalls the officer telling her that he had seen here there about an hour-and-a-half before.

“We need to find you someplace to go,” Carlson recalls the officer saying.

She told him that she lived in Edmonds.

“He said, ‘I can’t bring you over to that side,' and that’s all I remember,” she said.

Carlson remembers the kindness of the shelter staff, noting that it seemed at capacity but they made room for her. She remembers being covered in baby blankets because no other blankets were available.

“There were people snoring all over the place,” she said.

At 2:37 a.m. an employee at the Salvation Army’s winter shelter called 911 to report a woman had experienced a seizure about 20 minutes before and was unconscious. Over the phone line, the dispatcher could hear Carlson moaning as another seizure started.

“I went to try to shake her to get her off the cot,” the employee told the dispatcher, according to a recording of the call obtained by the Kitsap Sun. The employee said a Bremerton police officer had brought the woman in about an hour before. The dispatcher gave the employee instructions on how to help Carlson and said help was on its way.

“I thought she might have been a (domestic violence) victim” or had post-traumatic stress disorder, the employee told the dispatcher.

Moore said when her mother arrived at the hospital she could only respond to questions by saying “no.”

Thursday, December 14, 2017

By this time, Carlson’s sister was fading. Her sisters were desperately trying to reach her and alarm was rising because she hadn’t returned their calls or texts.

Moore started retracing her mother’s steps. She called the places she stayed in Neah Bay and La Push, confirming her mother had checked in and out and had not left behind her phone or phone charger.

“Then I got more concerned,” Moore said.

She didn’t know how to contact Carlson’s friends in Hansville and was casting about for people who might have heard from her.

Carlson was being treated at the hospital, but because she couldn’t answer questions and because hospital workers could not contact anybody who could give them information about her health history, she had not been given an MRI, Moore said. All they knew is that she had suffered seizures, but doctors had yet to diagnose her stroke.

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Friday, December 15, 2017

Since it had been days since anybody heard from her mother, Moore began to worry. She started calling anybody she could think of who had contact with Carlson, and kept finding the same thing: Nobody had heard from her. She had missed social engagements, calls were going straight to voicemail.

She spoke with Lingen in the morning and heard that Carlson had apparently left the house in Hansville in a state of disarray.

“That is not typical of my mom,” Moore said. “We got more concerned.”

The call was a revelation for Lingen as well: “Clearly something is wrong,” she said.

Moore called 911 and had Edmonds police stop by her mother's residence, but the officer said nobody was home.

Moore called her mother’s primary care doctor where she was promptly put on hold.

“I knew there was something they wanted to tell me,” Moore said. She works in the healthcare field so she knows how strict privacy laws can be.

“I understand, but come on,” Moore said.

A short time later the phone rang. It was a doctor at Harrison Medical Center who explained that Carlson was in the hospital after being taken from the Salvation Army.

“My mind at this point is whirling,” Moore said. “Why is my mom at a homeless shelter in Bremerton?”

Carlson’s ex-husband was still listed as her emergency contact. Moore said he still cares for her mother and said he never got a call and would have rushed to help if he knew Carlson was in trouble. Ultimately, he gave doctors the approval to conduct the MRI that showed Carlson had suffered a stroke. Moore texted a photo of Carlson’s paperwork from Harrison Medical Center to the Kitsap Sun. The document showed her diagnosis as stroke.

Moore, who has two young children, made arrangements with her husband, packed a bag and started toward Bremerton.

It would take her some time, so she called Lingen who left Hansville and was the first to arrive at the hospital. After seeing her friend Lingen knew something was wrong.

“There was a glaze, a definite glaze,” Lingen said.

While en route, Moore was able to speak with her mother on the phone.

“She was clearly confused about the whole thing,” Moore said.

Moore got to the hospital and didn’t leave her mother’s side until she was discharged Dec. 21, sleeping in the room with her. Looking though Carlson’s purse she found the paperwork for her drunken driving arrest.

“She had this crazy story, we couldn’t put it together,” Moore said.

Carlson’s son, who lives in eastern Washington, arrived and helped track down Carlson’s car in an impound lot, paying hundreds of dollars to have it released.

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Aftermath

Later, Moore tried to reconstruct the week. After talking with Carlson’s friends about when they last heard from her and when she began sending odd texts and missing calls, Moore estimated Carlson suffered the stroke on Saturday, about two days before she drove to the Kingston ferry terminal.

Carlson recalls standing in the Hansville house for what seemed like long periods.

“I was sick, but I didn’t know why,” she said.

In July, prosecutors declined to file charges against Carlson.

Prosecutor Chad Enright confirmed the blood test found no alcohol and showed the medications in Carlson’s system were within therapeutic levels.

“Although the substances have the potential to cause impairment, we don’t think we could prove this case to a jury without a reasonable doubt,” Enright said, reading the memo on why prosecutors didn’t file charges against Carlson.

After nine days in Harrison, Carlson left Kitsap County and went to a rehabilitation facility in Edmonds until Dec. 20, 2017. During this period, her sister died.

Carlson has hazy memories of their last conversation, and it has haunted her for the past year that she wasn’t to be with her, but another sister said she was able to tell Diane that she loved her.

“There was a lot of concern about how mom would handle it,” Moore said of the last conversation between sisters. “But we felt important for her to talk to her sister.”

A year later, Carlson is recovering. Her speech and balance have returned and she hasn’t had another seizure. Moore thinks she is beginning to process the trauma of her days spent in Kitsap County and the loss of her sister.

Moore said she was unsure at first how her mother would recover, and discussed with her husband having Carlson move in with them, but Carlson remains at her home in Edmonds.

“I feel comfortable enough to have her watch my kids,” Moore said. “That means she is doing well. We’re so thankful given everything that has happened.”

Carlson is thankful, too, knowing that it could have been worse.

“I’m alive,” she said.