WHAT A HEEL: Shoplifting Costs Dying Woman Heart Transplant
Diane McCloud, 48, who was freed from jail before serving out her 15-month sentence for two petit larceny charges so she could get on the waiting list for a heart transplant, has been rearrested and incarcerated again for stealing $500 in toiletries from a CVS pharmacy in Oceanside, Long Island, New York Lawyer reports:
At her arraignment before Nassau County District Court Judge Francis Ricigliano, Ms. McCloud, 48, pleaded guilty to petit larceny, a Class A misdemeanor. Wearing a bag pumping fluid to keep her heart working, she offered no explanation for the act, said her attorney, Leonard B. Isaacs of Valley Stream. …
Mr. Isaacs said Judge Ricigliano committed to a 21-month sentence for both Ms. McCloud's old and new crimes as part of her plea deal. The sentence will account for several months of time served. In January, doctors said Ms. McCloud had less than six months to live.
"The heart transplant is off the table," Isaacs tells the New York Daily News, because inmates are not qualified for Medicaid, which would have paid for the transplant for his client:
McCloud, who could be heard sobbing in court, travels with an I.V. drip that keeps her heart pumping.
She had been going to screenings at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan to get on a heart transplant list there.
"I don't know if she can medically survive another year. I hope she does, but it looks bleak," Isaacs said. "It's not the judge's fault. He was kind by giving her an opportunity to get a heart transplant."
It wasn’t just her kleptomania McCloud refused to give up. She also continued to smoke, even though she is in end-stage heart failure and was advised to quit while awaiting a donor heart.
Isaacs and the transplant team at Mount Sinai must feel like saps for wasting their time and effort on McCloud. The Stiletto only hopes that some other deserving patient was not bumped down a spot on the transplant waiting list because of her.
Barring mental illness, McCloud brought that on her own self. I'm hoping the doctors do not feel like saps for taking a chance on her. One has to try. For those who are Christian, consider that Jesus took a chance on every one of us- repeatedly. Obviously, not all of us took advantage of that. If they reach out to her again, maybe they should feel like saps but the first time ... "Fool me once, shame on thee. Fool me twice, shame on me."
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