A 15-year-old resident of Fresh Start Services on Apricot Lane contracted an antibiotic-resistant staph infection earlier this week, leading to the closure yesterday of the home for juvenile probationers. Catherine Tokarczyk, the mother of the infected boy, said her son developed a rash and a fever earlier this week, and was left untreated for three days.

Girma Zaid, director of the home, said the boy was seen by doctors when he started showing symptoms, but they misdiagnosed the staph infection as a bug bite. When the condition worsened, they brought him to another doctor, who made the diagnosis. The closure is temporary, Zaid said, because the disease is contagious. Other residents of the home have been relocated so he and his staff can clean and fumigate, and hopefully take the children back by next week.

Tokarczyk blames unsanitary conditions at the home for her son’s illness, and does not want to take him back there if the facility reopens. And she’s concerned about more than squalor. Zaid, who operates the home, has a checkered history as a child caretaker. In California, he operated a foster family agency called Grace Home for Waiting Children that was shut down in 1999, according to the Los Angeles Times. According to the paper, two children died and another was left in a vegetative state while in the agency’s care, allegedly due to abuse by foster parents. Zaid left the agency in 1998 to work abroad, but it had been troubled since its inception, plagued by abuse and bad conditions. The Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services has not yet responded to requests for information. Deaths at Grace Home for Waiting Children prompted a censure of the state foster program by the federal Department of Health and Human Services, according to the Times. His agency in California matched children in the county’s care with foster parents.

Zaid has been operating Fresh Start Services in Las Vegas since 2004. It operates several different homes around the valley, although the one on Apricot Lane that was shut down is the biggest, with about two dozen beds. Juvenile probationers are assigned there by judges and probation officers, according to sources. The facility is licensed by the Clark County Department of Family Services. Read more about Zaid and Fresh Start Services in next week’s CityLife.