Water Damage Restoration in Santa Rosa, CA

The night before Susan Horton gave birth to her daughter, she had already gone into early labor and she wanted something quick and simple for dinner.

She feasted on a frozen pizza and an “everything” salad kit from Costco from the fridge. She remembers how delicious the salad was, and how the poppy seeds crunched in her mouth.

The next day, the 39-year-old gave birth at a Kaiser Permanente hospital in Santa Rosa. But when a nurse came to her room, instead of bringing her healthy newborn, Halle, she told Horton that she tested positive for opiates in her urine and could not take her baby home.

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Horton was stunned. “Are you sure it’s my urine?” she recalled asking the nurse. She had no clue how it could be positive for anything. It wasn’t until later that Horton and her family began to suspect that the poppy seeds from the salad were the likely reason for the positive drug test, which prompted a traumatic battle with authorities to prove Horton was a fit mother and not a drug user.

The hospital launched an investigation over the incident.

“It was devastating to our family,” Horton said.

The case, which took place in 2022, was recently reported by Reveal News and the Marshall Project as one of several examples of parents who were turned over to child protective services authorities and lost custody of their children because of inaccurate drug tests.

California

July 10, 2024

The incident began during the pandemic when Horton opted to skip some prenatal appointments because she lived with high-risk people and she didn’t want to risk getting them sick with COVID-19. When she arrived at the Kaiser hospital to give birth, the staff questioned her about missing the prenatal appointments and asked if she would be willing to provide a urine sample, which she did. She doesn’t recall them asking if they could test the urine for drugs.

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Once the test came back, hospital staff told Horton that they would have to file a report with child protection services. Horton asked if she could take another urine test but was told a second test wouldn’t negate the first one she took.

Eventually, Horton found out that her urine came back positive for codeine — an opioid pain reliever typically used in cough medicine. Even though Horton hadn’t taken cough medicine, health officials say consuming poppy seed products can lead to positive results for morphine, codeine or both due to the sensitivity of the drug tests. Horton remembered there were a lot of poppy seeds in the Costco salad that she had consumed the night before giving birth.

Later that day, a child protective services employee came to the hospital to speak with Horton and her husband. Horton recalled being asked about her parenting and her other children. The worker also wanted Horton to sign a written arrangement between CPS and guardians on how dangerous situations will be addressed. Horton refused.

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California

Aug. 23, 2024

“I chose not to sign it because it would feel like I was admitting guilt,” she told The Times. “I wasn’t guilty and didn’t do anything wrong.”

Horton was later given paperwork stating that Halle wasn’t safe in the custody of her and her husband and was being taken away. Halle also had to stay at Kaiser for an additional five days to be monitored for drug withdrawal symptoms. Horton opted to stay with her.

Horton’s mother-in-law was given temporary custody of Halle and the family left the hospital with a court date scheduled for two days later. Because her mother-in-law lived about five minutes away from her in Santa Rosa, Horton said she was able to visit and care for the newborn.

In court, Horton and her husband were asked if they would take another drug test, which showed negative results. A CPS worker also came to their home and observed their children. During the second court hearing, the judge dismissed the case and Horton’s baby was returned to her custody, about two weeks after she had given birth.

“All I wanted to do was to be home with my husband and my kids,” Horton said.

Horton said she was upset at how Kaiser had handled the situation and that her family is planning to switch their insurance. Her husband also filed a complaint with Kaiser about the ordeal; the hospital said it would investigate the incident but Horton hasn’t heard back on the results.

“I was treated like I was guilty instead of being innocent until proven guilty so it really traumatized us,” she added.

Amy’s Kitchen will lay off 15% of its workforce, or 311 workers, as part of a company reorganization plan shared with employees over the past two days.

The layoffs will include employees at the organic food company’s Petaluma and Santa Rosa facilities as well as remote staffers, according to the North Bay Business Journal, which first reported the news Thursday.

The Amy’s drive-thru restaurants at the San Francisco International Airport, in Rohnert Park and in Corte Madera will not be affected by the layoffs, nor will the company’s plants in Idaho and Oregon, company officials told the Business Journal.

Amy’s President Paul Schiefer called the layoffs “heartbreaking” in an interview with the Business Journal, but said they were necessary to keep the company competitive in a prepared foods market that has changed since the pandemic.

The company, which manufactures organic frozen foods like pizzas and burritos, also laid off around 300 employees in 2022 when it closed its San Jose production center, citing inflation-fueled costs and supply chain disruptions.

The Petaluma-based prepared foods purveyor has been embroiled in labor disputes in recent years.

In January 2022, an Amy’s Kitchen employee filed a complaint with the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, alleging unsafe and hostile working conditions at the company’s Santa Rosa plant. The complaint spurred state regulators to investigate the plant and ultimately fine Amy’s $25,000 for health and safety violations at the facility.

The Food Empowerment Project, a food justice nonprofit, organized a nationwide boycott of Amy’s Kitchen products following the January 2022 complaint. The two-year boycott ended in June 2024, after Amy’s agreed to increase employees’ wages and benefits.

Reach Maliya Ellis: maliya.ellis@hearst.com

Oct 3, 2024

Hearst Fellow

Maliya Ellis, originally from New Haven, Conn., is a recent graduate of Harvard University, where she studied Social Studies and edited the Harvard Crimson’s weekly news magazine. Her summer newsroom internships — on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s features desk and the Boston Globe’s metro team — have confirmed her passion for deeply reported local news. In her free time, Ellis enjoys long runs and word games. She is excited to explore a new coast and a new city.

UPDATED FORECAST: Bay Area heat wave isn’t going away. New forecast shows when dangerous temperatures will spike

Numerous daily temperature records fell across the Bay Area as an autumn heat wave turned up a notch Tuesday.

The Bay Area hot spot was Sonoma County Airport, hitting 106 degrees.

San Jose, Santa Rosa, San Rafael and Kentfield also set temperature records. See a full list of records at the table below.

San Francisco’s official weather station at Duboce Triangle hit 94 degrees, the hottest October day in 12 years, but fell short of the 1980 daily record of 97 degrees. Ocean Beach got as hot as 92 in the early afternoon, while the Potrero neighborhood hit 96.

Heat wasn’t confined to the Bay Area, as several other California cities experienced extreme October temperatures.

The mercury climbed to 117 in Palm Springs, the city’s hottest October temperature since weather measurements began 103 years ago. Tuesday’s 117-degree reading follows a brutally hot summer in Palm Springs, including a July heat wave that recorded an all-time high temperature record of 124 degrees.

Hot weather was predicted to continue for several more days across California. More temperature records were expected to be threatened Wednesday and Thursday.

Tuesday night is not expected to provide much relief in the Bay Area. Temperatures are forecast to remain in the 60s at the coast, upper 60s to mid-70s in the inland valleys and the mid-70s to upper 80s in hills above 600 feet. These overnight temperatures are about 10-20 degrees warmer than normal, as much as 35 degrees above normal in the hills.

The excessive heat warning continued until 11 p.m. Wednesday for the bay shoreline, the North Bay mountains, the East Bay, South Bay and Santa Cruz Mountains, including San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose. A heat advisory was in effect for the coast and the North Bay valleys. Wednesday’s forecast called for highs are in the 80s to low 90s at the coast, mid-90s to low 100s along the bay shoreline, and upper 90s to 106 degrees inland.

Long-range weather forecasts favor warmer-than-normal conditions continuing across California through mid-October, although not quite as extreme as Tuesday’s record-setting numbers.

Reach Anthony Edwards: anthony.edwards@sfchronicle.com. Reach Greg Porter: greg.porter @sfchronicle.com. Reach Jack Lee: jack.lee@sfchronicle.com