Asthma attack kills uninsured striker

Yvonne Young, right, and Bruce Brown become emotional while talking about Ms. Young’s mother, Audrey Smith Campell, a healthcare worker at Kingsbridge Heights Rehabilitation and Care Center, who passed away last week, in this Friday, May 23 photograph.

More troubles for embattled home

By N. Clark Judd

The family and co-workers of a long-time employee at the Kingsbridge Heights Rehabilitation Center are blaming the nursing home's owner for her death.

Audrey Smith-Campbell, who had worked at the nursing home for almost 30 years, died May 12 after a severe asthma attack. Ms. Smith- Campbell's union, 1199 SEIU, had announced in November that workers at the Cannon Place home were bereft of benefits since Ms. Sieger had ceased to pay for them. The move - part of a labor dispute that began when the home could not agree on a contract with the union in 2002 - eventually drove the union to strike in February, union officials have said.

Yvonne Young, Ms. Smith-Campbell's daughter, said her mother could not pay the $600 a month necessary for asthma medication after benefits disappeared in November. She had been stretching out the supplies that she had, and was relying on a single inhaler, Ms. Young said.

"If she had the medical benefits, I believe in my heart of hearts that she would have been still here today," said Ms. Smith-Campbell's sister, Quettf Stewart. "The thing is, she had asthma most of her life, and she was able to keep it under control. But with the strike, it took a toll on her… because of the stress, because the stress would trigger an attack."

Ms. Sieger and the home's administrator, Jacob Perles, have declined to be interviewed by The Press, but Ms. Sieger is quoted in the May 26 edition of The New York Times accusing the union of using Ms. Smith-Campbell's death to gain support.

In February, Joel Cohen, an attorney representing Ms. Sieger at the time, said that she did not want to make retroactive payments to make up the difference between what the union expected in benefits and what she had been paying before she stopped in May. He said the nursing home would be willing to pay a higher premium going forward.

Ms. Smith-Campbell's family held her funeral May 20 at Lenox Road Baptist Church, in Brooklyn, where she was a dutiful usher.

"Service started and she was there, religiously," Ms. Stewart, Ms. Smith-Campbell's sister, explained.

Ms. Smith-Campbell's family and friends recall her compassion and sense of humor. Jackie Simono, who worked with her at the nursing home for 12 years, remembered her bringing meals of fried fish for the strikers and playing Gospel music in the day room of the nursing home before the strike.

Lance Brown met Ms. Smith- Campbell through his mother, one of her co-workers. During the strike he gave Ms. Smith-Campbell a place to rest in his car after her shift. She affectionately called him by the nickname "Ugly," he remembered.

"She gave until it hurts," Ms. Stewart said May 23, as union members chanted her sister's name before the doors of the nursing home. "That was Audrey. That was my sister."

This is part of the May 29, 2008 online edition of The Riverdale Press.

Have an opinion on this matter? We'd like to hear from you. Click here.