Death-Benefit Award to Mayor’s Widow Raises Questions About Work and Stress

Tony Van Dyke had been mayor of La Palma barely two weeks when he collapsed and died at a City Council meeting on Dec. 4, 1984. When his widow filed a claim for worker’s compensation, officials began a yearlong struggle to decide what role, if any, his jobs had played in his death.

Van Dyke also was a retired Buena Park police officer with a history of heart ailments.

The case was unusual not only because Van Dyke died while presiding at his first meeting as mayor, but because officials had to determine whether the stress of being a politician contributed to his stroke, and if so, how much.

“That’s been the underlying question that has everyone concerned,” La Palma Mayor Keith Nelson said. “He was on the job for less than two weeks. It’s a difficult pill for any resident to swallow. How can you say that his death was related to his job because stress is associated with any politician’s job? That’s the question we’ve been struggling with for a year. And there is no easy answer on that.”

This week, La Palma agreed to pay $39,500 from city coffers while Buena Park’s old insurance coverage has picked up an additional $15,500. Both cities will pay an additional stipend for medical costs that amounted to less than $2,000, La Palma City Manager Richard Rowe said.

Although Van Dyke was new as a mayor, he had finished a four-year term as councilman two years earlier. Walter King, an attorney for Van Dyke’s widow, Cara, said the four years on the council and the two years he “worked hard to get reelected” contributed to his death.

According to King, Van Dyke was eligible for a maximum of $30,000 from Buena Park, where he was a police sergeant until his retirement in September, 1974. State law presumes that among police officers heart conditions are job-related. But state death benefits increased after his retirement from Buena Park, making his widow eligible for a total of $95,000 from La Palma and Buena Park.

Lump Sum Payment

As part of the settlement, Cara Van Dyke will receive the money in a lump sum from each city, King said. Had he sought and won the maximum $95,000, the money would have been paid in weekly installments. By compromising, both sides won, King said.

“It was a fair settlement for the City of La Palma, it was a fair settlement for the City of Buena Park and it was a fair settlement for Mrs. Van Dyke,” King said. “Everyone was satisfied. (It was) one of these cases where the right thing was done.”

La Palma Vice Mayor Richard Polis said that negotiating a settlement was not easy for those who knew Van Dyke well and thought him a friend.

“It was tough to begin with when he died,” said Polis, who rushed to Van Dyke when he slumped from his chair. “When I put him on the floor, he was already gone. . . . I lost a friend.”

But Ken Tipton, who has since resigned from the La Palma City Council, effective Tuesday, criticized the lack of public discussion on the settlement.

“You’re spending city funds in the back room. If we’re settling it, what difference does it make if we vote in the public. Why hide it?” Tipton said of the council’s closed session to discuss the matter. Because La Palma is not covered for the first $100,000, the claim will be paid by the city and not the insurance company.

Tipton also was critical of a $10,000 payment to Van Dyke’s widow by the city’s life insurance company, which covered Van Dyke for the two years before he was mayor. “The day he was off the council, he was supposed to be off the insurance,” Tipton said.

Rowe said both Van Dyke and former Councilman Ronald Nyburg kept their policy after their terms expired and “personally paid the premium. There was never any cost to the city.” The cost to the councilmen was $39.60 each per year, Rowe said.

The policy to allow council members to keep such benefits was implemented about a month before Van Dyke and Nyborg left their council positions, Rowe said. The policy was changed last year after Tipton complained that it was “a freebie.”