The last time Dawn Boyd Woodson saw her youngest child alive, he asked her to spray him with the perfume she kept in her purse.
"I said, 'What if the other boys make fun of you?'" Woodson remembered about their final chat. "He just told me, 'I don't care. It reminds me of you, Mom ... like you're with me."'
Fifteen-year-old Caleb Jensen had already been away from his mother and siblings for seven months. Following a bout with the law, the troubled Murray teen was taken into custody by the state juvenile justice system in the summer of 2007.
"It was emotional," Woodson said through tears during an interview this week. "My baby just wanted to come home."
Five weeks later, Caleb was found dead, bundled in a feces- and urine-soaked sleeping bag, according to an autopsy report. His death was attributed to a days- to weeks-old "large amount" of staph infection, a methicillin-resistant Staph aureus.
Now, Woodson is suing Utah County doctor Keith R. Hooker, the now-defunct camp Alternative Youth Adventures and its New Jersey-based parent corporation, Community Education Centers Inc. — all of which had been entrusted with her son's health while he attended a court-ordered, 60-day wilderness camp in Colorado. The lawsuit also names the Utah divisions of Child and Family Services, which had custody over Caleb, and Juvenile Justice Services, which had sent him to the camp. Neither division had been served a copy of the lawsuit as of Friday.
Woodson's 50-page lawsuit, filed Jan. 13 in West Jordan's 3rd District Court, seeks at least $45 million in total compensatory and punitive damages for the agonizing death of her son.
Caleb was not the first Utah child to have died in wilderness camps for wayward teenagers. Since 1999, three other children have died in such camps in Utah.
Christopher Greeder, spokesman for Community Education Centers, calls Caleb's death "a terrible tragedy," but he insists "there was no wrongdoing on the part of the company or staff.
"CED was at all times in full compliance with the regulations governing the wilderness program," Greeder said.
A Colorado grand jury disagreed, though, and in July 2007 indicted camp director James Omer, medical director Hooker and field EMT Ben Askins on charges of manslaughter and fatal child abuse.
A judge dismissed the complaints against all of the defendants except Community Education Centers. A trial is scheduled for March over the boy's death.
Hooker, a Utah County resident, continues to work as an emergency-room physician at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center in Provo, where he's "an active, good-standing member of our medical staff," said Janet Frank, hospital spokeswomen. Hooker did not respond to a request for an interview.
Utah has not contracted with any other wilderness program since Caleb's death, although it continues to offer child-care licenses to privately run camps.
Twelve in-state camps are currently operating with about 20 youths each, said Ken Stettler, director for Utah's office of licensing. According to Stettler, Utah has some of the toughest and most stringent regulations for such wilderness camps in the nation.
Elizabeth Sollis, spokeswoman for the two Utah government divisions being sued, said wilderness camps never proved to be more effective than other correctional programs, and the state no longer sends children to the camps.
Dan Maldonado, director of Juvenile Justice Services, said that in the place of wilderness camps, "we use high-end psychiatric facilities and proctor-care services, like foster care, for our youth."
Private camps cost between $150 to $300 a day, Stettler said. "A lot of (camps) are phasing out because they're market-driven. Camps are expensive."
He added that none of Utah's programs are considered boot camps, "military-style outfits with in-your-face yelling. That's not permitted here."
Twenty-six days after the state dropped Caleb off at a rugged southwest Colorado plateau, he developed blisters on his foot, became sick and wrote in his journal on April 24 that he was "burning up, vomiting and having trouble hiking."
Court and medical documents describe his next — and final — week alive as one replete with ignored complaints by staff accustomed to downplaying their adolescent clients' distress.
Despite observable infection symptoms, scratches, blisters and a swollen knee, staffers took no vital signs during periodic health checks, the boy's autopsy report stated.
On April 25, Caleb lost control of his bodily functions and repeatedly soiled himself.
He was given Ibruprofin and an over-the-counter antidiarrheal medicine and eventually was told to wear a diaper, according to an indictment against the camp and its medical team handed up by a grand jury in Colorado three months after the teen's death.
The indictment said students complained to staffers that Caleb was "going really crazy" and talking to nonexistent people.
"Several students approached the counselors regarding Caleb's health and were told to worry about themselves," according to the autopsy report.
Tension between the sick, irritable teen and the camp's staff caused them to separate him from the group early on, the indictment and autopsy report said.
"Several calls were made to the base camp during the time period of April 29-May 2, reporting Caleb Jensen's condition to EMT Ben Askins, Jim Omer and other Alternative Youth Adventure staff; no staff from base camp responded, and no additional medication was sent or authorized for Caleb Jensen," the indictment states.
Robert Kurtsman, a forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy, said that "employees of Alternative Youth Adventure ... failed to perceive a substantial and unjustifiable risk to the well-being of Caleb Jensen by interpreting his symptoms and behavior solely as manipulative."
In letters home, Jensen wrote that he was only permitted to wash twice a week using minimal amounts of water.
"In his last letter to me," his mother remembered during an interview in Salt Lake City, "he said he wished he could go back and be a naive little church boy again." She paused, nervously fidgeting with her hands and skirt. "He's supposed to be home."
Caleb ended his letter, "P.S. I want my mommy."
On May 1, the night before bacteria completely stopped Caleb's heart, a staffer called his mother but said nothing about his worsening symptoms. Instead, Woodson was told that Caleb was behaving badly and would need to stay longer.
"I was devastated," she said. "We were planning so many things together. I couldn't wait to get him back home."
That night, ill and alienated from his peers, Caleb endured the chilly air in his saturated sleeping bag fully clothed, wearing his winter hat. He remained there, all the way through the next day's 81-degree heat. Staff discovered his bacteria-ravaged, 137-pound body late that afternoon, according to the autopsy.
A corporate officer called Woodson four hours later.
"I said, 'What?' — three times," she said. "I didn't believe it. And he kept saying, 'Your son is dead.' I dropped the phone, fell to the ground and died inside."
Woodson's burden of proof in her civil case will be substantially lower than Colorado's criminal one. Her attorney, Thomas Boyle, told the Deseret News that his investigation shows that state authorities were aware of the boy's vulnerability to infections by the fact he had been treated for them while in its custody prior to being sent to the camp. "And then they go off and send him to a rugged outdoor experience," Boyle said.
Seven days after Caleb's death, the Colorado Office of Licensing suspended Alternative Youth Adventure's child-care license, which, in turn, nullified Utah's contract with the company.
It wasn't the first time the camp's license had been held in jeopardy. In 2002, the Utah Department of Human Services placed Alternative Youth Adventure on corrective action when it was operating in Utah for failing to provide proper and timely treatment to a child in its custody.
The department changed its policy to include strict language that required camps to do a more thorough assessment of injuries. The new policy also required camps to train staff to know they are empowered to override the medical director and request removal of a child. And the policy included a statement that said "under no circumstances should a complaint be allowed to continue more than 48 hours without removal for further evaluation."
Caleb remained at the camp for seven days after he fell seriously ill.
Woodson, in the interview this week, was upset as she recalled Caleb's past state-treated infections and the events at the camp.
"It doesn't matter if they did or didn't know his past," she said. "They should have taken care of him."
E-mail: jhancock@desnews.com