CASE STUDY:
ALBERT WIEDA, Hang-glider Pilot

Although the state pension system says he's disabled with a painful groin problem, retired Suffolk police Officer Albert Weida says he loveds to fly hang gliders - a strenuous sport in which enthusiasts jump off cliffs, catch an updraft and soar hundreds, sometimes thousands of feet above the ground.

"I do it for the enjoyment," Wieda, who's also a weightlifter and motorcylist, said when first approached by reporters earlier this year to discuss his hobby. "Ijust love getting up there and flying around. It's about as free a feeling as you"re going to get without getting stoned."

Wieda was hang-gliding with friends in the mid-1980s, one witness says, while at the same time trying to win a disability pension, citing a serious groin injury. Wieda's doctor diagnosed him as disabled, but medical records examined by Newsday show that three doctors who examined him for Suffolk County found him normal. A diagnostic test called for an intravenous pyelogram also found nothing wrong. The state pension system rejected the initial application.

Nine years passed between the 1976 incident that Wieda said caused his problem and the granting of his pension. While he filed appeals, testified at hearings and consulted doctors, Wieda also kept busy flying his hang glider, according to one of his gliding colleagues.

Stanley Novak, proprietor of the Long Island Game Farm and a veteran hang-glider buff, said he and Wieda were part of a group of enthusiasts who flew weekly, sometimes more often, throughout the first half of the 1980s. Usually they would launch from a cliff in Mattituck, Novak said, and fly over Long Island Sound along the North Fork coastline.

"Al could stay up for hours," Novak said. Wieda's gliding friends knew that he was seeking a disability pension, Novak said, but Wieda always maintained that his case was legitimate.

Once a glider is aloft, flying it is not physically taxing. But getting up in the air does take effort.

The craft weighs 90 to 100 pounds, and glider pilots carry it on their backs while jumping from a cliff or running down a hill to launch the flight. "The physically demanding thing is muscling that glider around" before takeoff and after landing, Novak said. During the years when they were gliding together, Novak said, Wieda kept fit through frequent weightlifting.

Wieda said in his disability application that his troubles started after the spare tire of his police car came loose from its mounting. When he tried to move the tire back, he said, he slipped and pulled a groin muscle. There were no witnesses.

The following year, Wieda said he developed a painful, recurring infectious inflammation, called epididymitis, of the right testicle.

Doctors disagreed over Wieda's condition. Some found that not only did he have a disability, but also that it was job-related. Others concluded there was nothing wrong with him.

His doctor said the muscle pull had caused the epididymitis and also an inflammation of the prostate. The county, however, challenged Wieda's claim and sent him to three other doctors.

Dr. Carl Mueller of the county's Office of Employee Medical Review examined Wieda and reported: "There is no objective evidence of disease or injury." Dr. Noel Miller, medical director of the county agency, also examined him and concluded: "The examination .... revealed the genito-urinary area to be completely normal." Miller reported that a urologist had also examined Wieda for the county. "The findings of the urologist were anatomically normal. There was no pathology discovered at the examination. There was no evidence of any chronic difficulty in the genito-urinary area." The radiologist who conducted the intravenous pyelogram concluded: "There is no pathology in the urinary tract."

Nevertheless, with the help of lawyers from the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, Wieda eventually prevailed. The state pension system reversed its initial rejection of his claim. He got his tax-free $19,873-a-year pension in 1985 and retired at age 39.

In several conversations with Newsday, Wieda said he still flies hang gliders regularly, both from hills near his home in Troy, Pa., where he belongs to the Free Spirit Flight Club, and from the cliffs on Long Island's North Fork. "We fly along the North Shore, Rocky Point to Mattituck," he said. His longest flight, he said, was "two and three-quarters hours. The only reason I came down was that it got dark."

When a Newsday researcher met with Wieda at his ex-wife's house in Mastic, a hang glider was strapped to the roof of his truck, which had a "I'd Rather Be Hang Gliding" license plate frame.

But later, when another reporter asked about his disability, Wieda changed his story. "I haven't flown in years," he said. In fact, Wieda said, he couldn't recall doing any hang gliding at all since the state declared him disabled.

CASE STUDY:
EDWARD JOHNSON

Suffolk police Officer Edward Johnson was off-duty and returning from the St. Patrick's Day parade in New York City in 1982 when he rear-ended a car at a stoplight in Smithtown. He refused to take a breath test, but he was arrested, charged with driving while intoxicated and immediately suspended from his job for three days.

Three weeks later, his career in shambles, Johnson, 49, suffered what he said was a disabling injury.

He was walking through the squad room at the First Precinct in North Lindenhurst when he struck his left elbow on a metal door frame, he said. There were no witnesses. Johnson complained of pain in his left elbow, neck and shoulder and numbness in his hand, but doctors could not reach an agreement on Johnson's problem.

His orthopedist diagnosed him as disabled because of the elbow injury. But a county doctor questioned whether his problems were related to the elbow injury at all. Records show that Johnson refused to take a myelogram, considered one of the most definitive tests.

"It was felt that his disability . . . was not related to an injury of his elbow but to a problem in his neck," said Dr. Carl Mueller, a physician who examined Johnson for the county. Johnson had banged his head on the steering wheel when he crashed into the other car, his lawyer said at the time.

Further complicating his case was the fact that Johnson had broken the same elbow at the age of 6, and had undergone an operation to correct the fracture, which left him with a permanent elbow deformity. Johnson also had a heart condition.

Joseph Michaels, then the director of medical evaluation for the Suffolk department, recommended that Johnson apply for ordinary disability, a reduced benefit given to officers with medical conditions that are not job-related. Noting that Johnson was working only sporadically, Michaels wrote his superiors that Johnson's "attendance record would be detrimental to any command."

Between the injury in 1982 and 1988, when he was awarded a disability pension, Johnson worked only 330 days, according to the police department, but for most of his time off was paid at full salary.

Despite questions about Johnson's injury, he was granted a disability pension of $33,011 a year, tax-free, in 1988.

Assistant Deputy State Comptroller John McManaman said the state pension system was aware of Johnson's accident and arrest. But McManaman said there was medical evidence supporting the claim that Johnson's problems were caused by hitting his arm on the door jamb.

"Our doctors tied the disability to the April 10 accident," McManaman said, referring to Johnson's door-jamb incident.

The disposition of the 1982 drunk driving charge could not be learned because the record has been sealed by the court. Johnson was found guilty on departmental charges related to the accident and was fined 20 days' accrued annual leave.

Since Johnson's retirement, records show, he has continued to have problems on the highway, including a conviction for driving while impaired and an unrelated accident in which witnesses said he was on the wrong side of the road.

Johnson did not respond to repeated requests for an interview.

CASE STUDY:
RAYMOND NEWBOLD, LIFEGUARD

The summer sun glints off the water as Raymond Newbold, his body toned from exercise and tanned from lolling in the sun, climbs the ladder and hoists himself into the wooden lifeguard's chair.

The state pension system says Newbold, a former Nassau police officer, is permanently disabled by a bad left knee, injured in January, 1991. But the state parks system says the 45-year-old ex-cop is capable of guarding your life - able to jump from the chair, run down the beach, dive into pounding waves and pull out a drowning swimmer from the sometimes rough surf at Jones Beach.

Even, in the summer of 1992, while awaiting a decision on his disability pension, Newbold continued working as a lifeguard at Jones Beach, state payroll records show.

Newbold, who did not respond to several requests for an interview, retired in 1992 after 19 years with the department.

In January, 1991, Newbold reported that while lifting a heavy person in the cramped bathroom of a Seaford residence, he lost his balance and fell into a wall, twisting his knee. By that autumn, Newbold complained of an inability to walk, and was given crutches, records show.

He underwent arthroscopic surgery in December, 1991, to repair damage to his knee joint. In February, 1992, his orthopedic surgeon, Dr. S.S. Farkas, reported that Newbold "states that he can't run or sit for any long periods of time due to knee pain." Farkas concluded that Newbold was permanently disabled.

By August, 1992, Newbold had been approved for accidental disability retirement by the state retirement system. He receives $49,568 a year, tax-free.

Despite his knee complaints, Newbold was working as a lifeguard during the summers of 1991 and 1992, according to James Dolce, legal coordinator for the state parks commission.

As a lifeguard, Newbold has been paid $7,026.78 for 1991; $7,596.24 for 1992, and $8,081.90 for 1993, Dolce said.

Joseph Scalise, director of water safety for Jones Beach, said Newbold is working there this summer. Scalise said he would have no worries about his own family swimming in the surf with Newbold on duty.

"Ray is able to do running, jumping and swimming at a very high level of efficiency," Scalise said, adding he was surprised to learn that another state agency had found Newbold disabled.