MASON'S VET NOW WORKS FOR BOKS AND IS INVOLVED IN THE CASE

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Cynthia Hockman (Hockaman?) who is the newest Animal Services vet whom I met at the West Valley shelter on the opening day last week, is Ron Mason’s former vet, and the person who refused to turn some of his cats’ medical records over to him after the October 11, 2007 bust!!! I mistakenly referred to her as Cynthia Hoffman in a previous post.

Hochman went immediately from her job as vet at Holiday Humane where she was Mason’s vet, to being the newest vet added to Animal Services about three weeks after the ACTF busted Mason. Hochman was Ron Mason’s vet!!

Mason now believes Hochman may have been the vet that turned him in to the ACTF!! Now she is part of the team gathering evidence to convict Mason. Mason said he was never going to mention anything about Hochman until now that she is working for the same organization that busted him.

Man, is this ever a conflict of interest and most definitely a breach of medical ethics and probably the law. This whole case gets more and more twisted and sicker by the minute.

Cynthia used to give Mason bottles of Amoxi medication to Mason, both with and without tags on them prior to the bust. This is the medication that ACTF confiscated from him and which will have her name on as Mason’s vet!!! No wonder the evidence has disappeared; apparently they are covering Hockman’s butt.

About two weeks before the bust, an employee from Holiday Humane called Mason and told him that he better hide his cats, that something was up. Mason was warned that something was coming down from someone who worked with Hochman. This is while she was still working as the main vet for Holiday Humane.

Immediately after the bust, Mason went to Holiday Humane and requested copies of his vet records from Hockman who was still employed there at that time. At this time Hockman told Mason she wished she had never met him and that she was two weeks away from starting her new job and she was afraid of losing it, apparently because ACTF had seized both the tagged and illegally untagged Amoxi she gave Mason, and I assume she wrote that down in the medical records. At that time, Mason did not know that that new job she was talking about was as a vet for LAAS.

Hochman refused to give Mason any medical records more than three years old, saying the law did not require Holiday Humane to keep records longer than that, and refused to give Mason the older records which she still had in her possession. Why?Mason said he had medical records going back five or more years, which she refused to give them to him.

She also, according to Mason, told him not to bring his cats to Holiday Human for shots anymore, but that he should take them to shot clinics at Red Barn on Topanga.

My God, what a confused mess we have here. Mason’s own vet was involved in the bust Mason that I assume was to make the ACTF and Boks look good, and likely to make an audition tape for the Animal Precinct TV program--or at least she knew about it while still his vet.

On top of that, no one from the downtown City Attorney’s Office will talk to Mason, because “The case is still under investigation.” Jeez, one would expect investigating detectives to talk to someone that was a suspect. So why are they refusing to talk to a suspect?

Therefore, Mason went to the North Valley City Attorney’s Office where he talked to Mike Sheehan, who is a Deputy City Attorney in the Criminal Division. He told Mason to call Linda Ortega, the detective who had told Mason two days before the bust that they (ACTF and LAAS) can take whatever they want from him, anytime they want from him. She is also the one shown holding the orange and white cat, Johnny in the Daily News pictures. This is the geriatric cat that apparently was euthanized even though confiscated veterinary records—according to Mason—will show was old but healthy.

Sheehan told Mason that if Ortega won’t talk to him, he needs to demand he talk to her supervisor and then they will have to talk to him.

Regarding Johnny the elderly cat, Mason was given an Order to Comply by Animal Services in July that he take Johnny to a vet because he looked ill. They had previously given him a similar order in mid-2006, with which he did comply and took Johnny to his vet. Guess who it was? Cynthia Hockman! Both times Hockman wrote on the Orders to Comply that Johnny was old but healthy for his age. This is probably the “very elderly cat” I was told was euthanized at West Valley who supposedly was put on life support by Dr. Rao.

In the meantime, all requests to find out where his cats are have been unanswered, including Brad Jensen’s request for public documents. Lt. Troy Boswell said he won’t tell Mason anything about the cats but that he should consider turning over ownership to LAAS. Imagine that, Boswell wants Mason to surrender his beloved cats, who are also evidence animals that prove he was taking care of them, so that LAAS can do whatever they want with them. Of course, this assumes any are still alive.

This is getting sicker and sicker. Did Cynthia Hochman, along with Troy Boswell and the ACTF/Boks, knowing that Mason was an easy target, someone whom they were in constant contact with and one of whom had been treating his cats for five years, set Mason up? Is this why Hockman said she wished she had never met Mason and was worried about her new job with LAAS and probably feeling guilty because of her part in the bust?

Remember in Boks news release still on the LAAS website, that he said a "small amount of Amoxi" had been confiscated? He sure didn't mention it had been prescribed by one of his own hired, but not eyet started vets.

Is this one of the reasons that the Mason case has gone underground?

What more interesting information is going to come out now?

From the Veterinary Medical Board:

Licensee Name:
HOCKMAN CYNTHIA LEE DVM
License Type:
VETERINARIAN
License Number:
14409
Expiration Date:
August 31, 2008
Issue Date:
June 08, 2001
Licensee Name:
HOLIDAY HUMANE SOCIETY VETERINARY CLINIC

Guess how much Cynthia was making at Holiday Humane? $104,451!! She told me she took a pay cut because she could help so many more animals than at Holiday Humane--and also to ream Mason.