Alleged Impostor MD Tripped by Odd Call : License Renewal Led to Arrest, Medical Agency Investigator Says

A phone call to state officials by a woman claiming to be a doctor’s wife called special attention to a medical license renewal case and eventually led investigators to arrest a Santa Ana man on a charge of practicing medicine without a license, according to court documents.

The report reveals the complicated trail that state Board of Medical Quality Assurance investigators followed to find Enrique Herrera, the man who had allegedly assumed the identity and medical documents of Alvin J. Stewart, 65, a retired and disabled Oxnard physician.

Herrera, 36, was arrested April 28 by the state medical board investigators on 16 felony counts, including practicing medicine without a license, perjury, forging a prescription for a controlled narcotic and other forged-prescription charges.

According to state officials, Herrera worked at Emergi-Care Family Center, a walk-in clinic in Fountain Valley and Westminster, from November, 1984, until last month, performing minor surgery and Pap tests, setting broken bones and administering medical examinations.

Herrera’s $100,000 bail was halved Monday by Municipal Judge Kathleen E. O’Leary, who also ordered Herrera to produce a handwriting sample for the Orange County district attorney’s office.

There had been no patient complaints about Herrera’s performance, state medical board officials said. Instead, state officials were tipped off to the case by irregularities in a medical license renewal application submitted in Stewart’s name.

A report written by Jerry A. Smith, a senior investigator for the medical quality board and on file at West Orange County Municipal Court, reveals new details about the case.

The report said a woman claiming to be Rachel Stewart, wife of Dr. Alvin J. Stewart, called the state agency to inquire about the license renewal application on March 31, the same day the application and a money order for $320 was received.

The woman said her husband now was practicing at 906 W. LaMark Lane, Anaheim. Terri Hunley, a Board of Medical Quality Assurance cashier supervisor who handled the call and the application, then determined that Stewart did not qualify for renewal because the doctor had not completed required continuing medical education.

Hunley followed up with a telephone call to Alvin J. Stewart at his home in Oxnard to advise him of the renewal problem, but Stewart told Hunley he had not practiced medicine for at least two years because he was recovering from open-heart surgery. Further, he told Hunley his wife’s name is Erma, not Rachel.

Hunley, thinking the wife was trying to renew the license without her husband’s approval, turned the case over to the state medical quality board’s license fraud unit for investigation.

Several days later, Smith interviewed Stewart in Oxnard, who said he had worked as a general practitioner in Anaheim in 1982, when he had a heart attack and immediate open-heart surgery.

Description Fit Real Doctor

Later that same day, Smith went to the Anaheim address, and a woman identifying herself as Rachel answered the door. She told Smith that her husband, Stewart, was working at an emergency clinic in Fountain Valley. She said she met him in Oxnard and described him as overweight with white-gray hair and having many medical problems--a description that fits Stewart of Oxnard, Smith noted.

The woman produced a California driver’s license identifying herself as Rachel Archer and provided an Emergi-Care business card for Stewart.

When Smith got to Emergi-Care’s offices in Fountain Valley, the suspect had left for the day. Smith advised Dr. Francis Foo, the clinic owner who hired the so-called Dr. Alvin James Stewart, of the investigation.

“Dr. Foo considered (Herrera) to be his best physician,� Smith wrote.

In a later interview, Ruby Foo, the clinic owner’s wife, told Smith that Rachel is the name of the suspect’s ex-wife. While the suspect--known to all at the clinic as Jim Stewart--had remarried a woman named Sylvia and had a 2-year-old child, he had told Ruby Foo “he still loved Rachel and wished that he could marry her again,� the investigator wrote.

Dr. Foo gave the medical quality board copies of the resume and federal Drug Enforcement Agency permit that had been submitted in Stewart’s name when he was hired.

Paid $98,470 in 1985

As the investigation continued, Foo supplied the Board of Medical Quality Assurance with additional information, including an Internal Revenue Service Form 1099, which showed the Alvin James Stewart who worked at the clinic made $98,470.03 in 1985.

He also provided a canceled payroll check made out to Stewart on the back of which was an address, 3122 S. Salta St., Santa Ana. Subsequently, state medical board investigators arrested Herrera at the Santa Ana address. The officials did not know Herrera’s name until the arrest, they have said.

Herrera’s attorney, Roland G. Rubalcava of Santa Ana, said after Monday’s hearing that he asked for the bail reduction because “to date there has never been any evidence that this man ever harmed anyone during his work . . . in fact, people have said he served in a competent manner.� He will seek to further reduce the bail at a future court hearing, he said.

Rubalcava said Herrera told him that he served four years in the medical corps in the Navy and then completed an 18-month physician’s assistant training course at USC and received a certificate. Rubalcava added that he believes Herrera once worked for the real Dr. Stewart in Oxnard.

State medical board officials could not be reached to comment on Rubalcava’s information.

‘Risk of Harm’

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Martin G. Engquist responded that whether Herrera harmed anyone “is not the yardstick by which you measure his conduct. It’s the risk of harm by virtue of his not being credentialed. . . . In fact, he isn’t credentialed to treat animals, much less humans.�

Besides, Engquist added, it may be too soon to know whether anyone is suffering from an inappropriate diagnosis. “If not appropriately diagnosed and treated, the outcome may not be known for some time. . . . There may be victims out there who have suffered as a result of going to this guy. Time will tell.�

A pretrial hearing has been set for May 14, and Herrera’s preliminary hearing is scheduled for May 27.