Security guard pays price for heroic act

Monday, Dec. 1, 2003 | 11:07 a.m.

In his dreams, former security guard Steven Glenn sees a 14-inch butcher knife coming at him.

Time after time, he tries to push it away but he misses, and every time the blade slices through him. He's helpless.

Then the attacker goes on to kill everyone Glenn was supposed to keep safe.

"I wake up in a puddle of sweat with my heart going 80 mph," Glenn said.

The nightmare isn't far from the truth. Last December Glenn was seriously injured as he tried to stop an attacker in the Clark County Social Service center he was guarding on East Lake Mead Drive in Henderson.

Glenn was stabbed in the chest, herniated two discs in his back and suffered several other injuries as he helped stop an attacker who would have killed someone if not for Glenn's efforts, police say.

Glenn was hailed as a hero by social service workers at the office, and he was honored by the Clark County Commission and the Henderson Police Department for his bravery.

The nightmares are just one part of the stress and anxiety he has felt during the last year as he tried to rebuild his life.

Glenn, who is now considered partially disabled from the attack, has found himself at odds with his employer and the workers' compensation company.

"I saved a whole building full of people and went through a year of hell because of it," Glenn said. "I've been nothing but kicked for the last year. Right after the incident I got the medal, the standing ovation, all these pats on the back. Then everybody went poof."

Glenn's life changed on Dec. 10, 2002.

Police say Michael Tracy McLaughlin walked into the social service center in Henderson and became upset after he and others were told they wouldn't be able to see their caseworkers.

Investigators say McLaughlin went outside to a porch on the building and tried to cut worker Kathryn Atkinson's throat. Atkinson, 57, fought her attacker, suffering cuts on the hands. Then Glenn, who was sitting down to lunch, heard a "blood-curdling scream."

"I looked out the window and could see him pummeling the hell out of (Atkinson)," Glenn said.

Glenn hit the door running and knocked McLaughlin off the woman.

"He bounced off the wall like rubber and came after me with a steak knife aimed straight at my heart," Glenn said.

Glenn, who was born legally blind in his left eye, couldn't get out of the way fast enough and took the knife in the chest. He knocked the knife away and put McLaughlin in a hold he had learned in the course of more than 20 years of martial arts and five years as a bouncer and security guard.

McLaughlin slipped right out of it.

"That's when I knew exactly what I had gotten into," he said. "I thought maybe this wasn't a good idea. Getting stabbed in the chest was nothing."

Once loose, McLaughlin stabbed office supervisor Susan Rhodes, 56, in the thigh, presumably because she had yelled for someone to call 911, the office supervisor told police.

That's when the real battle began, Glenn said.

"About the only thing we didn't do was bite," Glenn said. "Any cheap, dirty trick you can do to kill or permanently maim each other we were doing to each other. He was targeting my lower spine. You do that to leave people in a wheelchair and that's what he tried to do and he damn near succeeded."

McLaughlin was also "superhumanly strong," Glenn says, possibly because he believes McLaughlin was on crack or some hallucinogenic drug.

"I outweighed him by 40 pounds and he was flipping me around like a rag doll," said the 6-foot-1, 225-pound Glenn. "He was completely and totally impervious to pain and psychotic."

Two elderly church workers, one bearing a lead pipe and the other an office chair, finally helped Glenn corner McLaughlin in the office until Henderson police arrived, Glenn said.

SWAT team member Chris Smith, one of the first on the scene, said officers found McLaughlin with two more knives in his possession.

"We believe he would have grabbed another knife, and finished doing what he was going to do," Smith said.

The main office looked like a major fight had taken place, Smith said, with tables and chairs turned over. He said 16-20 people were hiding in a back room.

Smith said Glenn was definitely a hero.

"To take one or two stab wounds and continue fighting, that definitely shows a will to help people," Smith said.

Glenn went to UMC's trauma center. McLaughlin was treated for injuries to his hands at St. Rose Dominican Hospital across the street from the social service building where the fight took place.

McLaughlin was charged with multiple counts of attempted murder and battery. The seven-time felon, mostly for grand theft auto and burglary, plans to defend himself in the Dec. 22 trial, prosecutors with the case said.

Glenn said he does not regret joining the fray and stopping McLaughlin. But the price of playing hero has cost him his livelihood, his health and more and more his peace of mind.

"I'm bitter about the way I've been treated, but as far as what I did," Glenn said, shaking his head and searching for the right words. "If I hadn't done it, it wouldn't have read (in the newspaper headlines) two secretaries and security guard injured. It would have read two secretaries dead. If I hadn't have done it, God knows how many people would have died."

Glenn's first post-attack struggle came when police told Glenn's trauma surgeons McLaughlin was positive for HIV. It was 10 weeks before Glenn found out police were wrong about that.

Then came the struggles with his workers' compensation insurance, Meadowbrook Insurance Group, in February after the company terminated his disability payments for six weeks because Glenn's employer, Darryl Cronfeld of Official Security, had offered Glenn a new job. The job offer from Cronfeld did not meet the light duty restrictions set by Glenn's doctor, and a judge ordered Glenn's disability reinstated in April.

Glenn's doctor took so long to approve a second job offer dated July 16 that the job -- monitoring a parking lot -- was no longer available, Cronfeld said. It was Sept. 15 before Glenn's doctor approved the job. Glenn's attorney, Kathy Potvin of Craig P. Kenny & Associates, questions whether the offer met the work restrictions.

"Steven has been very open to moving into a position but they haven't given us anything we can even consider," Potvin said.

Cronfeld disagreed.

"The job that I offered him a person in a wheelchair could have done, could I phrase it any kinder?"

There is no other job offer on record since the July 16 job was removed from the table, and Cronfeld refused to comment on the current state of negotiations. He did say it was "his duty" to hire Glenn back.

Cronfeld said any blame for Glenn not being back to work belongs to Meadowbrook or the third party administrator, Genex, which has been handling the claim. The time it took to process the Glenn's claim in turn led to the problem in his doctor getting the paperwork to clear him for the job Cronfeld offered.

Legal representatives with Meadowbrook said they could not discuss the case due to privacy laws, and officials with Genex did not return multiple phone calls.

Cronfeld also blames Glenn, who he says is "feigning" pain and exaggerating the extent of his injuries. He also does not buy Glenn's claim that he can no longer serve as a security guard in any form because he can no longer run away from nor fight a combative person.

Like most security guard firms, Official Security has a noncombative policy in which guards are supposed to call 911 in case of an emergency and never get physically involved.

"A true security officer's job is to observe and report," Cronfeld said. "But I don't know what I would have done" in Glenn's situation, Cronfeld added.

Cronfeld praised Glenn's actions in news reports after the incident, but now he questions Glenn's version of events and said Glenn has a history of taking a combative approach despite company policy.

Glenn admitted he had been in 14 on-the-job altercations from February 1999 until McLaughlin's attack last December. Many of those had been in his work as a bouncer. He had been stabbed in the back eight months earlier while working at Hurricane Harry's in Las Vegas.

He said those fights are all apart of the business, that despite a noncombative stance, "sometimes people want to fight you," Glenn said.

When that happens, a security guard has to be able to run or fight back, Glenn said, and he needs his cane to even walk.

"I'm never supposed to fight again," Glenn said. "The next drag-out fight could get me paralyzed."

Jim Dunkle, owner of Las Vegas Security Patrol, said security guards do face "fight-or-flight" decisions, but instances of that are rare.

Several security supervisors in the city told the Sun they doubted Glenn could ever be a security guard again, given his permanent inability to run or stand for long periods. Desk jobs in the field are rare.

Glenn said he'd rather be retrained to do something safer, preferably working with computers. Vocational rehabilitation is one of the major issues at his Dec. 8 workers' compensation hearing, Potvin said.

"It's usually not that big of a battle for vocational rehabilitation," Potvin said. "You can either put him back to work or you can't."

In addition to his workers' compensation headaches, Glenn's injuries continue to plague him. Because the herniated disks in his back are only irritating the nerves there and not damaging them, a back specialist ruled out operating, medical records show. A month of intense rehabilitation in May helped improve Glenn's mobility only partially, Glenn said. He also suffered injuries to his left shoulder, right hip and right knee during the fight that continue to give him pain, he said. He's fighting to get those injuries covered by Meadowbrook.

The self-described workaholic said he is wasting away in his cramped apartment, playing chess or checkers on his computer or researching information that will help his case. He said he is eager to go back to work but fears he will never be able to be a security guard again.

Clark County Commissioner Myrna Williams, who presented Glenn with a Distinguished Medal of Honor for his heroic actions last December, said Official Security and Meadowbrook should retrain Glenn for a new career.

"I mean look at what he did for them, look at what he did for the people there," Williams said in a phone interview. "He's a very fine man and he shouldn't have to go through this. I mean he put his life on the line."

Glenn said he appreciates the thanks he has gotten from those he saved, and his more recent commendation from Henderson Police on Oct. 30.

"There is no question that Mr. Glenn's heroic actions saved the lives of those two innocent women that day in December," police said in the distinguished service award. "He acted without thought to his own safety to ensure that those women would live."

"It's nice to know someone still cared," Glenn said.

Now he's just waiting for the Dec. 8 hearing to resolve his workers' compensation issues.

"I'm in limbo," Glenn said. "I have no job, just disability, and no idea what is going to happen next."

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