Trevor Williams/Getty Images
Audio By Carbonatix
In late 2024, 73-year-old Mai Thi Vu began feeling chronically unwell. She was intensely fatigued and consistently nauseous. Her nails were turning black, she was rapidly losing weight and her skin was blistering and discolored.
Prior to this, Vu had been healthy for her age. She experienced some skin irritation, but she treated that with a drug called Hydroxyzine, a prescription antihistamine she took in 50-milligram doses.
Or so she thought.
According to legal records, over the early months of 2025, Vu’s blood work began showing signs of anemia, bone marrow suppression and liver issues. She had also lost 15% of her body weight. In May, her doctor finally found the reason: Vu hadn’t taken Hydroxyzine since November 2024.
Unbeknownst to Vu, she had actually been taking 500 mg of Hydroxyurea, a similarly named chemotherapy drug mistakenly dispensed to her by the Mesa Safeway Pharmacy she had been regularly visiting for several years.
In December, Vu filed a lawsuit against Safeway; its parent company, Albertson’s; and Timothy Lee, the pharmacist who filled her prescription. She’s seeking damages for physical pain, emotional distress, loss of enjoyment of life, diminished health and independence, economic strain and more — all of which her suit says were incurred as a result of “Hydroxyurea toxicity.”
Steven Beus, Vu’s attorney, was unwilling to answer questions or comment on the case when asked by Phoenix New Times. Albertson’s also did not respond to requests for comment.
The Department of Health Services confirmed neither Lee nor that specific Safeway Pharmacy has been subject to any previous complaints or malpractice suits.
It’s unclear why or how Lee allegedly approved and filled the incorrect prescription, especially considering the fact that the correct prescription had been previously filled and documented correctly in Safeway’s system, according to Vu’s suit. The suit says that the day the medication mistake occurred, records show Lee filled the incorrect prescription not once, but twice — once for “approximately 348 capsules, and again for 12 capsules,” the complaint says.
Even the description and directions on the outside of the bottles corresponded to Vu’s correct medication, the lawsuit says. That means that every day, she was taking up to four tablets of the chemotherapy drug, which is a highly potent medication typically used to treat leukemia and sickle cell anemia.
Vu’s lawsuit says she had been patronizing this same Safeway Pharmacy on the corner of Main Street and Dobson Road in Mesa for years. Pharmacy staff knew her personally and were well aware of her need for translation and additional support as a Vietnamese-speaking customer, according to her complaint.
Vu stopped taking the chemotherapy drug as soon as her doctor discovered the error, but her lawsuit says that even as late as August 2025 — three months since the mix-up was discovered, and long after the drug had left her body — she was still experiencing chronic fatigue, fever and other symptoms of toxicity.
Neither Safeway, Albertson’s nor Lee has responded to the complaint in court, and no hearing dates have been set.