Long ago robbery costs man his job

WASILLA — Mark Likkel said he really wasn’t expecting the tap on his shoulder he got Oct. 10.

He was on the job, working as surgical support at Mat-Su Regional Medical Center.

“They came up to me and said, ‘Hey, go to [Human Resources],’” Likkel said. “I went to HR and they said, ‘Mark you’re out of a job.’”

The problem? 27 years prior he’d held up a grocery store.

“I put my finger in my jacket and demanded money from a cashier at a Safeway store,” Likkel said of the robbery, which he committed in Seattle when he was 21 years old.

The robbery hadn’t been a problem in the past, he said. He’d passed multiple background checks at the hospital. But, in 2007, the Legislature enacted a law, designating a certain class of crimes as “barriers” to employment in the health-care field. The list includes murder, rape and kidnapping, Some crimes, like theft and shoplifting, are only barriers for a certain number of years. Robbery, like murder and rape, is a permanent barrier.

Likkel said that ever since the issue came to a head the hospital has been cooperative. His problem, he said, isn’t so much with the hospital. They were just following state law. His problem is with the law itself and, in particular, its unintended consequences. He doesn’t think the intention was to put people like him — with clean records save one major blemish — out of a job.

“It’s government gone wild,” he said.

Hospital officials said they couldn’t discuss the specifics of Likkel’s case.

“It’s not our policy to publicly discuss any employee matters,” hospital spokeswoman Kerry Aguirre said.

But Aguirre did say the barrier crimes legislation is, in a broader sense, an effort to protect the safety of the hospital’s patients and that the hospital follows state law with regards to barrier crimes.

Likkel said the day he lost his job he was told to go get a variance. A variance, as the term applies to barrier crimes, is essentially a permit authorizing Likkel to go back to work despite the 27-year-old blemish on his record. He obtained one through the state’s Department of Health and Social Services.

But, so far, it hasn’t helped.

The law requires that the hospital hang a copy of the variance, “in a conspicuous place where the copy of the variance can be readily viewed by persons interested in obtaining the services offered by the entity or provider.”

Likkel said that so far the hospital has been reticent to post his variance.

Aguirre, when asked about the policies for variance postings, said, “it’s always on a case-by-case basis but it must fit within … the federal and state guidelines.”

Still, even though hospital administrators won’t hang his variance, Likkel said he doesn’t fault them. He doesn’t quite understand why they should have to.

When he was convicted of robbery, Likkel said, he was going through a rough patch in his life. He described that time as “walking around in a stupor,” high all the time. He’s not proud of what he did.

But, he said, he’s paid his debt. He served his jail time. And now, he feels, he’s been put in double jeopardy — asked to suffer consequences for a crime he’s already paid for.

Likkel has lived in Alaska 18 years. He worked 12 years in the Carrs/Safeway warehouse and, at the same time, spent 15 years as an on-call longshoreman at the Port of Anchorage. He’s been a janitor with the borough. Ever since the robbery he’s had no criminal record aside from minor traffic violations. That’s despite a year or two spent drinking.

“In 2002 I climbed in the bottle,” he said.

Once he’d hit bottom he went to Nugen’s Ranch, spent a year drying out. Now he’s got four years of sobriety.

And now all he wants to do is work and pay his child support. He’d hoped that working as surgical support would be the last job he had — that he’d retire from the hospital. But since he’s out of work he’s barely keeping a roof over his head. He said he’d probably be homeless by now if it weren’t for his hospital co-workers who helped him out with groceries and money.

“All of a sudden, bam, I’ve got nothing,” he said. “The state takes my job without looking at me as an individual.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.