KING

Some of Washington's most vulnerable unknowingly live in nursing homes with sex offenders.

Sex offender Richard Alderdyce has found a home - where he can escape his past.

He admits he has a long criminal history, but says people at his new home are safe with him there.

Alderdyce doesn't live just anywhere.

The Level II sex offender shares a home with a 130 other residents at the Theodora - a state-licensed care facility for the elderly and disabled in north Seattle.

"I've served my time for my crime," Alderdyce says.

His file reveals he is a former school bus driver for the deaf and blind.  He molested a 10-year-old girl and has a "lengthy history" of sex offenses, finding victims through charitable groups that help him out.

The non-profit Theodora is run by a charity.

It allowed Alderdyce in, in January, and even his roommate wasn't told of his past.

The office knows, Alderdyce says, but not the other people that live there.

Records uncovered by the KING 5 Investigators show at least three sex offenders have called the Theodora home recently, including 47-year old rapist Randy Vogan.

He's a Level III - the most likely to re-offend. And even though a flyer was passed out to neighboring homes and businesses, Theodora managers didn't tell residents.

State law classifies nursing home residents as a vulnerable population and says they should receive special notification when a sex offender is placed in their neighborhood.

Our investigation reveals that nursing home residents are rarely told when their new housemate is a former inmate.

We cross-checked a list of all nursing and care home addresses against the addresses of all the state's registered sex offenders.

We found 53 sex offenders registered at state licensed care facilities.

Recently, Bianca Rizzo was a patient at one of them, unaware until we told her, that a sex offender was also there.

'He'll do it to somebody else, somebody else that's susceptible. He can corner them into the bathroom," Rizzo said. "It could happen at any time behind the door. There's nobody there watching you."

Sometimes, even operators don't know of their residents' dark past.

We told the manager of the Pinehurst Park Terrace nursing home in Shoreline that patient Mika Bigelow is a registered sex offender - and fugitive - wanted by two warrants for non-sex offenses out of Seattle.

We passed our information to Terry Marker - a high-level administrator at the Department of Social and Health Services - which licenses long-term care facilities.

He says providers are not required to notify residents about sex offenders - or make special arrangements to care for them.

'Most of the threat is no different than any other client we're placing in there," explained Marker, who is assistant director for home and community services. "These folks are disabled. They're sometimes elderly and quite vulnerable themselves."

Some sex offenders - like Nicolas Atkinson are infirm. Others like 76-year-old Ernest Straube are elderly.

But our analysis shows nearly half of those we found are under the age of 50.

Wes Bledsoe runs an elder care advocacy group that's tracked more than 50 crimes at care facilities across the country.

"This is America's dirtiest secret," Bledsoe contends. "When you put predators in with the prey, somebody's gonna get bit."

A care home south of Seattle was a virtual playground for child rapist Kim Daly. Case documents reveal he scoped out the most timid and defenseless adult when he moved to the home.

He raped the 87-year-old dementia patient for 12 years, initially bribing him with cookies.

After his arrest, Daly admitted he wanted "someone that's like a child," and that's why he chose his small, elderly victim.

At least one state has responded to the problem.

In Illinois, new background checks for all residents have revealed that more than 1,000 sex offenders and ex-cons live in long-term care facilities.

But in Washington, some sex offenders have found a place where their secret is safe.

"I don't bother anybody else, and nobody else bothers me," Alderdyce says.

Richard Alderdyce has hop-scotched among several care homes since his release from prison eight years ago.

No other residents with whom he shared a room, or a meal, or stroll down the hall, had any inkling of his dangerous past.

"Wherever I've been, there's been no notification," Alderdyce said.

The Theodora and other providers told us they aren't being reckless.

They sometimes feel hamstrung by patient privacy, which they interpret to mean that even a criminal past can't be shared among residents.

If you want to check to see if your parent or grandparent is in a home with a sex predator, you'll find links in this story that can help, as well as tips on how to check out a nursing home.

One problem though, is that there is an even larger group of felons who are much more difficult to track. We'll take a closer look at that issue at 5 p.m., Tuesday (11/7/06).