Pollard appealed to higher-ups at DOC, and when he got nowhere, he filed his whistle-blower action in early 1993. His action was dismissed for two reasons: He had not filed his claim of retaliation within ten days, as the law demands, and he was not able to definitively prove a link between his disclosure and the subsequent change in his job.
Although the ten-day rule meant that under the law, it probably would have made no difference, Pollard thinks he might have gotten farther along if he'd had a lawyer. He was bitter about it at first, and considered trying to file again with legal help. Looking back on the experience, though, he sees his lack of legal savvy as a blessing in disguise.
"Who knows how much it would have cost me?" he says. "I still probably wouldn't have gotten anywhere."
Pollard began looking for other employment in the state government, and left Corrections in the summer of 1993. He has been happily employed ever since.
"It was just best to get out," he says.
Anyone who has been through it can tell you that the worst part of being involved in a whistle-blower action is finding out that doing what you always thought was the right thing can be so devastating, both personally and professionally.
It takes a long time, and a lot of money, to learn that lesson.
Whistle-blowers, it seems, are an overwhelmingly idealistic and, often, naive lot, motivated by what they think is obviously right. By embarking on a course that others might view as doomed, they set themselves up for falls that can take years to recover from.
Terry Thayer pursued, and lost, a whistle-blower action against Pinal County in 1990. Her allegations centered on a supervisor, now departed, whom Thayer thought was wasting county money on unnecessary equipment and supplies. She followed the proscribed channels, and notified a county supervisor of her manager's activities in the correct form.
Her manager found out about the disclosure, Thayer claims, and responded to her allegations by giving her unreasonable work assignments with impossible deadlines, reprimanding her for stepping outside to smoke and rejecting her requests for vacation and sick time. Over the next two years, she says, she found out how physically, emotionally and financially draining her choice turned out to be.
"I spent two whole years fighting over that," she says. "That's two years of my life I'll never get back. Two years of hating going to work every day. That takes a real toll on you."
Thayer says there were people in her office she had been friends with; her actions split the once-friendly group almost down the middle, some on her side and others against her. But with the exception of one person, even those who privately claimed to support her were unwilling to take her side publicly in the battle with the boss.
"It wasn't just me who suffered because of what I did," she says. "Everyone there felt it somehow. I know people there who have moved on to other jobs, people who were friends once but haven't spoken to each other at all now for years."
Her case took 21 months to wind its way through county channels, then, finally, to the personnel board. Her hearing officer ruled that although her work reviews had been exemplary until the date of her disclosure, then plummeted, and although her relationship with her boss had been cordial until she turned him in, there was no way she could definitively prove that he had retaliated against her because she had reported possible waste.
Thayer thought about appealing the decision to the courts, she says, but not for long.
"I had a long talk with my boyfriend at the time, and we added up the legal bills I already had sustained. I remember it to this day. Six thousand, eight hundred dollars, give or take a little. For what? I still lost my job."
It took Thayer more than a year to find another job in her field. Even then, she took a substantial pay cut. By the time she was making as much as she had before, three years had slipped by from the date of her first complaint.
The only county co-worker she keeps in contact with is one who stood up for Thayer, publicly, in the dispute with her boss. That friend, who still works for the county and asked that her name not be used, says she thinks she suffered retaliation of her own.
Learning from Thayer's example, she says she let it slide.
"There was no way I was going to go through that," the friend says. "Terry's a strong person, but toward the end of it, even she was really a mess."
Thayer doesn't necessarily disagree with her friend's decision. In fact, Thayer echoes the sentiments of most of the whistle-blowers interviewed for this story when she says she doesn't think she would go through the formal complaint process again.
"It was just too hard," she says. "There was so much going on, I could hardly keep up with it all. It cost me so much money. It set my life back. I lost 20 pounds. My boyfriend and I broke up. It was an awful time.
"I wouldn't wish that on anyone.
