Las Animas County – After almost five months of helping Hurricane Katrina victims, volunteer firefighters Andrew Rose and Loyd Holliman did something that many in their community have trouble accepting – they committed a federal felony by accepting a bribe.
Today, Rose and Holliman, both 56, report to a minimum-security federal prison in Englewood to serve 21 months. The men pleaded guilty in April to accepting a $20,000 kickback from a food contractor serving meals to Katrina recovery workers in exchange for helping the vendor increase profits.
Speaking publicly for the first time, Rose, a lieutenant with the Stonewall Fire Protection District, and Holliman, the district’s assistant chief, maintain they intended to use the bribe money to help Katrina victims and rebuild a high school in Algiers, La.
“I don’t want to minimize what we did, we broke the law,” Rose said. “But the people who know Loyd and me know all we’ve done to help people. Down there in Louisiana, because of the disorganization of FEMA, we were left to do what we had to do.”
Prosecutors said the two are now trying to justify their criminal behavior.
“After these guys have admitted their guilt, I find it absurd that they now protest they had some type of benign motive for what was a pretty well- engineered kickback scheme,” said Jim Letten, U.S. attorney for Louisiana’s Eastern District.
About a month after Katrina hit, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales assembled a task force that eventually brought more than 400 cases to combat profiteers hoping to get rich off the disaster. A vendor working for the task force recorded conversations with Holliman and Rose about the bribery scheme.
Rose said the vendor became concerned he would lose his government contract and began offering the firefighters pickups, vacation cruises and a spot on the company payroll if they helped him secure his bid.
Rose said he pleaded guilty only because his attorney advised him that a “Robin Hood defense” wouldn’t fly in front of a jury of hurricane survivors.
Letten doesn’t buy the explanation.
“If you look at the allegations in this case, their admissions and the strength of the evidence, it paints a picture of two guys who out of pure greed exploited the misery,” he said.
Looking at their backgrounds, Holliman and Rose seem like unlikely criminals.
Holliman has a private contracting business and was being groomed to take over as chief of the fire district.
“I’ve always wanted to help people in some form or fashion, and everything I do is from the heart, not the pocketbook,” Holliman said.
Rose, a lawyer who is independently wealthy, investigated banking fraud in the 1980s savings and loan scandal.
Stonewall’s fire chief, Larry Parsons, said he’s losing his best firefighters and promises to keep open the positions until the men return.
“You get them out in a wildland blaze, and they … know the critical time to pull people out,” he said. “They’ve saved lives.”
Both men have continued volunteering with the fire district. They volunteer thousands of hours a year fighting fires in their district and wildfires for the U.S. Forest Service.
The day the levees broke in New Orleans, Rose and Holliman called federal agencies to volunteer. Their roles were to set up and run a shelter for rescue workers.
The experience in the disaster zone shook both men.
Rose suffers flashbacks and night terrors, and he’s on antidepressants. Holliman said he too suffers from bad memories but refuses to seek help.
“Even though they might not have had their hands on dead bodies, Andrew is haunted by the sights of dead children, dead elderly and just the horrible devastation,” said Steffani Argyle, a Trinidad psychologist who treats Rose. “At some point, I think he overidentified with the population he was serving and he became one of them, who also needed, in essence, to be rescued.”
Rose has spent the weeks leading up to his prison sentence saying goodbye to family.
“The hardest part is going to be not seeing my grandsons for two years,” he said. “I can’t have them see me in prison.”
Holliman doesn’t have kids, but he, like Rose, is leaving behind his wife.
“I probably would have divorced Andrew, had I not seen how much pain and trauma he suffered doing his time for FEMA,” said Rose’s wife, Terry.
Holliman said he has not been able to get his mind around spending nearly the next two years in prison.
“I haven’t done much to prepare for prison mentally,” Holliman said. “I’ve been preparing everyone else for it.”
Staff writer Manny Gonzales can be reached at 303-954-1537 or mgonzales@denverpost.com.
